Feast of the Three Kings

Today was a lovely holiday-- a very perfect, merry Little Christmas to end of the Long Christmas. I spent most of the day with my sisters, and there was much singing of carols, much partaking of good foodstuffs, and fine drink, and much jollity in general. Several of the girls made individualised crowns for all of us, from cardstock and glitter, and we feasted whilst wearing them, which did, indeed, add to the occasion.

Before sharing today's song, I would like to share this short little sermon on the feast of the Epiphany. It is good, and beautiful, and interesting, and since I found it to be food for the soul, it seems well to pass it along to other people as well.

Today's song is The March of the Three Kings. I first heard it on the Chieftains' Christmas in Rome CD, where it, like Cazone de Zampognari form one of the reoccurring motifs of that album. I have only ever known it as a tune, nor did I think that there were words associated with it, until this rather satisfying French version of it came up as a recommended video. I nearly posted this version, but wondered if it might be possible to find an English version. So I went searching, and found a very nice -- albeit rather slick-- version of it by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. There were also a good many version of it as lavish orchestra pieces, with much braying of brass, and pomp and deliberation... and one truly weird version, which you should definitely take a short listen to, and which probably takes the cake for the weirdest adaption of a Christmas song I have ever come across. I finally settled on this one, because every now and again, you just really want a pull-out-all-the-stops Italian approach to a song, and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the slightly distorted, scratchy, old record sound very much indeed. And it medleys into Hark the Herald Angels Sing, so you get two songs for the price of one:

Entre le Bœuf et l'âne Gris

Tonight, you are getting an old French Carol-- the tune of which I have been passingly familiar with for some years now, though I had no idea it was a Christmas song. According to several sources (see here, here, and here) it is one of the the oldest Christmas carols in existence. It is quite a charming song, with the sort of simple-yet-profound lyrics that I tend to favour. I like the children's choir in this version - children's voices seem particularly suited to this carol - and I like the fact that the translation plays on the video in time to the music: 

The Professor!

Today is the Good Professor Tolkien's 128th birthday. I have no idea if the hobbits would say "twelvity-eight" or "one-hundred and twenty-eight", but they would no doubt have been very respectful of his great age. As is usual, I spent the evening being a Tokienist:

Writing out Toasts and Playing with Sealing
Wax -- Please note the Tree of Gondor.

Getting Set Up for the Toast: Whisky, Toast
Picture, Candles, Sealing Wax and Seal.

Toasting the Professor-- Yes, I Have a Giant
Gondorian Flag Hanging Above My Table--
It Was a Gift and I Love It.

In honour of the Hobbits, who valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, I am posting the following Christmas song. I have heard this before, but always sung in a rather slow and stately fashion, or if it is a woman singer, with a tendency towards icy, ethereal tones. This version is both quicker than the average and the tune is slightly different, and it really reminds me of Hobbits. (It also reminds me of my family celebrating Christmas):

And, because it is Tolkien's birthday, and I found it, and I can't resist, here is a video in which an entire decade of the Rosary is said in Quenya. It helpfully provides the Quenya text in both Tengwar and in Latin letters, as well as the English:

Carol of the Birds

Every now and again, a newer Christmas song comes along that I quite like. This doesn't happen so often as most modern Christmas songs... well aren't. They are set around Christmas incidentally, but nothing about the tune, the subject matter, or the feel of them have anything to do with Christmas at all. In fact, I tend to go through a bah-humbug period early on every December, when the deplorable stuff starts showing up on the radio and driving me crazy. 

This one, however, rather struck my fancy. Birds show up on several carols--  there is a Catalan carol, an Irish one, and (if I remember aright) a Polish one as well. I am not sure which one Tim Eriksen was drawing from here, (not the Irish) nor how much of it is new, but the overall effect is quite good, I think... and really, I do not understand why more artists don't do this sort of thing. I mean, who wants to hear another cheesy love song, that is made into an even cheesier Christmas song, because we happened to have snow and and a reference to Santa in it? Wouldn't we all rather hear about birds?

God Bless You and Send You a Happy New Year

While it is true that today is the beginning of a new year, and that I welcomed in 2020 with the customary Pipes At Midnight (in this case, playing a long medley all in one go: Canzone de Zampognari (twice through), Adeste Fideles (also twice through), Scotland the Brave, The Minstrel Boy, and Auld Lang Syne (twice through seemed a good thing for the traditional New Year's tune, so twice through it was.) followed by a long toast in which I faced the Crucifix and saluted Our Lord, drawing on Jacobite traditions and Tolkien, and mentioning Friendship, Truth, Beauty, and All Good Things, before downing a lovely whisky in a quiet house, lit only by the Christmas tree and various candles..... you are not going to get a post that reflects that New Year tradition, nor even a wassail song. (Look at me getting halfway through the Long Christmas without a wassail yet!). Instead you are getting an odd little carol which seems fitting to the other commemoration of this Holy Day of Obligation, the Circumcision of Our Lord. 

I know that it can seem strange to non-Catholics to celebrate such a feast day, but we do it for two reason. The first is that it marks the first occasion in which Our Lord shed blood for us. So great is the Majesty of God, that this small suffering would have been more than enough to save the world from sin. This should be a comfort for those of us who sometimes think that we have committed a sin too great for God to forgive-- or that we are just plain too sinful (without being particularly ostentatious in our wickedness) for His forgiveness. God is so great that a single drop of His blood is more than enough to wipe out the sins of the entire world, from its Fall to its End: how then, can any or our own personal sins, become so great that He cannot forgive them? Granted, His Love could not be satisfied by a small suffering, but insisted in pouring Itself out until It was utterly spent and there was nothing else to give, but that is because His is Love, and True Love, in God as in Man, is foolish in Its need to show Itself to the Beloved. The bare fact of the matter is that our Redemption was accomplished by the mere fact of God becoming Man entirely, and this first of His sufferings for us, had in it all that was necessary for our salvation. This is, indeed, a thing well worth celebrating! 

The second reason is that it was on this day that Our Lord was officially given His name: Jesus, that is to say, Saviour. In taking the name, on this day, which the Angel had given Him at the time of His conception, He was announcing the purpose for which He had come into the world. He was, in a very real way, taking up His mission, and all the pain and suffering that went with it, by the taking of His name-- again, a thing well worth celebrating!

So, the carol you are getting today, seems appropriate to this feast day in which the shadow of the Cross first peaks into the Nativity narrative. It is a variation on the Corpus Christi Carol, which I have posted here a couple times before. This version, however, is specifically meant for Christmas-- and, indeed, there are actually two lyrical version of this as a Christmas carol. The version I have chosen to give you strikes me as the more Christmassy of the two, though this particular arrangement of this particular version is lighter and more delicate than almost every other version I have found of it. (The music that goes with this particular variant tends to be rather dark, and while I like it very much indeed, it seems weirdly aggressive for my purposes.)