O Little Town of Bethlehem
“O little town of Bethlehem” was written by an Episcopalian minister of Philadelphia, Phillips Books, who, visiting the Holy Lands in 1865, was inspired to write a carol about the experience, notably for children and their annual Christmas program. His organist, Lewis Redner, furnished the haunting tune (changed to St. Louis to provide him some anonymity) and during the Christmas season of 1867, 36 children and their Sunday school teachers premiered it. Thus another children’s carol entered the popular repertoire.
Bearing this in mind helps us to appreciate the power of this hymn to inspire many ages of worshippers at the Christmas season. The opening verse sets the stage, as Brooks must have imagined standing in Bethlehem almost 2000 years later, opening with an apostrophe (“O!”) to the town itself:
O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie,
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, The silent stars go by. (v. 1)
The frequent alliteration (still-see; deep-dreamless; silent-stars) and internal rhymes (deep-sleep) create phrases that roll off the singer’s tongue. The stage is set for something dramatic to happen, not unlike in “Once in royal David’s city” as Brooks writes: “The hopes and fears of all the years/ Are met in thee tonight” (v. 1, line 4). The second verse conveys this anticipated event simply and directly—“For Christ is born of Mary—and as so undramatic that “mortals sleep [while] angels keep/ Their watch” (line 2). The third line makes this lack of pretention most manifest:
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n.
So God imparts to human hearts, The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin;
Where meek souls will Receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. (v. 3)
The silence of the town extends to the stillness of Christ’s birth, “the wondrous gift,” both symbolic of God’s hushed workings in all human activity where no “ear may hear His coming.” And just as docilely, “meek souls…receive Him.” In emphasizing this theme of humility, Brooks no doubt had in mind the very humble Sunday school children first to sing his hymn. This is confirmed by Brooks’ fourth verse often left out of the Christmas hymn today:
Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
It is in this very moment of children praying, of charity and faith metaphorically watching and welcoming, that Christmas comes again. So, children’s meekness comes to symbolize not only the meek Child Himself, but the holy-day itself. Surely this was an important message to late-century Christmas celebrants wrapped up in their secular holiday trappings, as Brooks re-focuses the simplicity of the holy-day through children’s voices.
--as taken from Clapp-Itnyre, "O Come, All Ye Children" published in The Hymn, 2017.
See more in Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories. (Nashville, TN: W Publishing/Thomas Nelson, 2011), 167.
See the score as found in a 1910 American Christmas Carols book, above, last slide.