{"id":12620,"date":"2009-12-17T17:29:15","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T22:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2009\/12\/17\/12620.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:54:00","slug":"carols-and-lessons-and-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2009\/12\/17\/carols-and-lessons-and-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Carols and Lessons and Lessons and Carols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger had seen one of the news articles about the grumpy CofE Bishop complaining about Christmas Carols<\/a>, and thought that actually, he had an excellent point. I think in particular the bit about how certain carols give an idea of the infancy or childhood of Jesus that is both an invention (in the sense that it is not in the Gospels) and an unfortunate invention. I particularly liked the line about how pretending, in “Away in a Manger”, that the Baby Jesus did not cry seems to imply that crying is somehow sinful. Now, I’ve never really understood Christian Messiah-hood, or Jewish Messiah-hood for that matter, but I think that any conception of Jesus that denies his infant tears comes awfully close to heresy, yes?\n

Furthermore, I think it is important what the carols say, and what they imply, and what they teach. Children sing these things before they understand the words, but they also sing them after they understand the words. And the Victorian context of some of the popular carols that the Rt. Rev. Nick Baines mentions in the article is not a healthy one, not one that we are generally happy to be using for childhood indoctrination and whatnot. And I think people should generally be aware<\/i> of what language they are using to tell their children the Greatest Story Ever Told, particularly as their children are, in fact, being told that this is the Greatest Story Ever Told, even better than the one about the bacon tree, and that this is What the World Is Really Like.\n

Ah, well. I see now from The Right Reverend’s Blog<\/a> that he considers himself ill-used by the press who slotted him in for the annual barmy bishop story. Ah, well. I must say the Bish seems like a very interesting fellow, and I wonder if his book<\/a> is any good—not really for me, if you know what I mean, but I imagine it would make a charming giftie for certain Gentle Readers.\n

I do wonder, not knowing anything at all, what religious carols American Christians know the words to. “Silent Night”, I’m sure. “Gd Rest Ye, Jerry Mendlebaum”, at least the first verse. “Hark the Herald-Tribune<\/i>”, again the first verse and perhaps the third. A couple of verses of “Joy to the World”, and maybe Good King Wenceslas looking out on his feets uneven (when the snoo lay round about) (snoo? What’s snoo?) and then the one that you hum up to where you go Glo-o-o-o-o-oh-o-o-o-o-oh-o-o-o-o-oh-ria (G-L-O-R-I-A!) and that’s about it, yes? Or am I wrong.\n

Because what the Bish is talking about is groups of parents and children singing “Once in Royal David’s City” at the conclusion of the pageant, and perhaps that does happen in England, but perhaps it doesn’t here. I certainly wouldn’t know.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger speaks of what he does not know, although I can hum along pretty well, and prefer it in Latin, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-item"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18956,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12620\/revisions\/18956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}