Violent Night

Alt Carol Verses

1~

Violent night, Holy fright
All is screams, All is fight
Round Yon Virgin Mother there
2000 years until gas and air,
You wont be sleeping for weeks
You wont be sleeping for weeks

 

2~

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given
The writer of this particular verse
Was surely, flipping kiddin'
He'd clearly never seen a real birth,
Yes, he surely was a male,
In describing the noise of that experience
Any words would fail.

3~

The Cattle are lowing
The poor baby awakes
If those Cows don't shut up
We'll be eating beef steaks.

 

 

Reflection: Violent Night

 

These alternative carol verses are obviously written with a certain amount of dark humour. If you were to find yourself actually singing them in some carol service or other, on one hand I’d want to apologise, and yet on the other I would be pleased that you remembered them. When I preform them. By the way, I also sing them!

If you were to remember them, although part of their purpose is humorous I would hope that you would think a little more about the meaning behind it.

This is my slight objection to the sanitisation of the nativity through carols that I mentioned in my first reflection. These verses, in their original words, are some of the worst offenders.

With all my best guess work and personal experience in the broad arena of childbirth I can all but assure you that the night would not have been silent. All would not have been ‘calm and bright’. The heavenly peace that the infant Jesus slept in was only assumed. We are not told that, and I believe for good reason. The gift may have been given wondrously, but was it really given silently? No ear can hear his coming, we were told. Are we quite sure about that? It feels like these verses were written by men: By men who had stood in the corridors smoking cigars until a cleaned up bundle of cuteness in fluffy terry towelling is handed to them. When my sons were born, everyone in the room heard their comings, first through their mother and then through their own mouths.

The business end of birth is something they had no business with. They want to have their view of their wives ‘unspoiled’. And as they sanitise birth, they sanitise their saviour.

No crying he makes? I ask you….

I’ve touched on this in the first entry, but the saviour was born into the reality of the human experience, in all it's filthy glory. He was spared nothing. Though fully God he was (and is still) fully human. Don’t rob us of that wonderful truth. He walked where I walk. He felt what we felt. He loves us in this way.

 

~Scripture~

For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize and understand our weaknesses and temptations, but One who has been tempted [knowing exactly how it feels to be human] in every respect as we are, yet without [committing any] sin.

~Hebrews 4:15 (AMP)