“Peace on the earth, good will to men, and there are some other words there,” he sang.
She looked up from her knitting.
“You’re kidding,” she said. “You don’t know the words to ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’?”
He furrowed his brow. “Not all of them.”
“That carol is one of the —”
“That’s why God invented hymnals,” he said. “We sing the words off the page. We don’t have to memorize them.”
“Oh, honey.”
“What?!”
“How can you sing a song like you mean it, if you don’t know what you’re singing?”
“Come on, it’s Sunday morning, we have to sing, I only had two cups of coffee, and now you want me to sing like I mean it?”
“At least know the words,” she said. “Get your phone out. Look it up.”
“Fine,” he said, pulling out the phone that he always carried in his shirt pocket. He tapped out “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear lyrics” and touched the button that said, “Search.”
(Actually, he typed “it came,” and the autofill gave him a list of options — “upon a midnight clear” was the second option, behind “it came from outer space.”)
“All right, here goes,” he said, reading the words out loud. “It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold. ‘Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven’s all-gracious king.’ The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.”
He looked up. “Kind of pretty, I guess.”
“Keep going,” she sighed.
“Still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled, and still their heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world; above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering wing, and ever o’er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing.”
Now, he didn’t need a prompt.
“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing. O, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
“For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old, when with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold when peace over all the earth its ancient splendors fling, and the whole world send back the songs which now the angels sing.”
His voice wavered over the last few words, and he composed himself for a few seconds before saying, “Huh. It’s like a story.”
“A pretty good story,” she said softly.
“I guess it helps to know what you’re singing,” he admitted.
“You goof,” she laughed. “Aren’t you the romantic who whispered to me last night, ‘You ask me if there’ll come a time when I grow tired of you? Never, my love!’”
“That’s different,” he laughed.
“You know all the words to THAT song,” she giggled.
“It means something!”
“And now you know ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ means something, too.”
“I guess it does,” he said quietly. He tapped on his phone for a few more seconds. “Wow.”
“What did you do?”
“I found another story,” he said. “Check this out: ‘The First Noel, the angels did say, was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay …’”
“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” by Edmund H. Sears, public domain, written 1849.
“Never My Love,” by Richard and Donald Adissi, © 1967 Tamerlane Music
