We, as a culture, have an obsession, or at least a seeming obsession, with having a white Christmas. The last report I saw said Albuquerque has a 4% chance of having a white Christmas, that is either having it snow, or having snow on the ground come Sunday.’ We have this obsession with a white Christmas even though it doesn’t match the reality for large parts of the world, including Bethlehem. Someone I went to seminary with was from the southern hemisphere and she said it wasn’t until she was a teenager that she understood why all the Christmas images had snow on them because of her Christmas took place in the middle of the summer, whereas we have Christmas in winter. But this idea of a white Christmas came around long before Bing Crosby’s immortal White Christmas was recorded. In fact, according to Ian Bradley, an expert on Victorian hymnody, he has said that In the Bleak Midwinter, which was written in 1872, “has probably done as much as anything to give generations of children the impression that the birth of Jesus took place in the snow.” Although not as popular today, this hymn used to be one the Christmas standards, and to give some indication of that, the house where Gustav Holst, best known for writing the Planets, wrote the tune is known as Midwinter Cottage in honor of this connection.
For the season of Advent, we have been looking at the hymns of Advent and Christmas to see what they teach us about our faith and the meaning, and need for Christmas, and I thought that In the Bleak Midwinter was the appropriate song for this evening’s service. There is something beautiful and magic about snow and the environment it creates. The author John Milton said of snow and Christmas, snow was nature covering herself with a veil to hide any ugliness from the Christ child. Snow covers everything and gives the world that soft edge while simultaneously absorbing noise to add the serenity and peacefulness that we associate with the Christmas season, or at least that we say we want in the Christmas season. But that beautiful image of snow is not what Christina Rosetti is talking about in this hymn. Instead she is talking about the ugliness and coldness of winter, the deadness, of frozen ground, and whipping winds and snow piling up snow on snow. This is not the winter wonderland that we like to sing of at this time of year. This is the bleak mid-winter, the end of February when winter has lost all its appeal, the snow is no longer beautiful, but a burden, when you are stuck up inside and you can’t wait for spring to arrive. It feels like Bill Murray’s weather prediction from Groundhog Day about winter: “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life.” This is not “it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” this bleak midwinter is the dark night of the soul.
