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Lessons and Carols is a musical Christmas tradition featuring choral anthems, congregational Christmas carols, handbells and readings from scripture. This year the theme is: “How Great a Love”

Please consider joining us!
(Yes, it is free)

If you are unable join us in person, the event will broadcast beginning at 6 PM below:


Click the icon below to download the Lesson and Carols Program:

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A History of Lessons and Carols*


Lessons and Carols is a service of Scripture and song that dates from the late 19th century. It was originally devised by the Bishop of Truro, England, and was a response “to discourage a different festive spirit found in the local Cornish pubs.” The service has since been made famous by the Choir of King’s College in Cambridge, England, through their internationally broadcast service on Christmas Eve.

In this service, we listen to nine Scripture lessons which recount the fall in the Garden, the promise of a Messiah, and the realization of that promise in the birth of Jesus. Each lesson is followed by a carol or other musical selection that reflects on the lesson’s message. The service progresses from darkness to light, as we move from the hopelessness of Adam’s fall into the glorious reality of the Redeemer’s coming.

Some of the planned musical selection this year includes:

*History from https://4thpres.org/resource-library/resources/lessons-and-carols-12-4-22/

 

Program Notes

An Introduction to Lessons and Carols
The story of the service of Lessons and Carols takes us back to Victorian England in the southern peninsula of Cornwall. For many years, the English celebrated the Christmas season with feasting and dancing—and wassailing, a practice of going door to door, visiting neighbors singing seasonal songs, and drinking. Neighbors were ready with beer, ale, and wassail—a drink made of brandy, apples and spices. Here is a sample verse of a song from the 1700s, the Gloucester Carol:

Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

So here is to Cherry and to his right cheek
Pray God send our master a good piece of beef
And a good piece of beef that may we all see
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

Here's to our cow, and to her long tail,
May God send our master a mug of strong ale
Of a cup of good beer: I pray you draw near,
And our jolly wassail it's then you shall hear.

Perhaps there was a bit too much drinking; the clergy in Cornwall were concerned that the miraculous birth of the savior Jesus Christ was not being the focus of the Christmas season. And so in 1880 Edward White-Benson, the bishop of Truro, held a service in a barn/shed (while the Truro Cathedral was being built) where the singing of Christmas hymns and the reading of scripture drew congregants. This service became a yearly event.
Fast forward to the University of Cambridge in 1918. Eric Milner-White had just been appointed Dean of Christ Church. He had served as chaplain in the Great War and had seen many disturbing atrocities on the front. According to Katie Buzzard at illinios.edu, “Milner-White devised A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols as a means of outreach to those who felt alienated by the church or religion as a whole. Instead of a complicated mass, the carols service was simpler, alternating between choral anthems, congregational hymns, and readings.” White based the order of service on what Benson had created in Cornwall.
He began with a treble chorister opening the service singing acapella, “Once in Royal David’s City.” That became a tradition that continues to this day at King’s College Cambridge. The program has changed little from 1918 to the present. The nine lessons are scriptures that tell the story of the gospel, from the fall of Man to the glory of the coming of the Savior. Choral anthems and congregation-sung hymns are interspersed between the scripture readings.
The service at King’s College has been held yearly since 1918 with few variations. During World War II blackout curtains were used in the cathedral at King’s College to keep the congregants safe from bombings. In 2020 there was no live service due to the pandemic, but the readings and choral pieces had been recorded in an empty sanctuary and broadcast on the radio worldwide. The service has been broadcast on the radio since 1922.
Mt. Airy Presbyterian takes its inspiration from the original. The nine scriptural lessons are the same. The choral anthems and congregational hymns vary from year to year, as the music director, Barb Scheffter, chooses a theme. This year the theme is “How Great a Love.”

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
This piece is taken from two Old Testament books. The first is Habakkuk 2:20, "Let all the earth keep silence before him,” and the second, Zachariah 2:13, "Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling." For the opening of Mt. Airy Presbyterian’s Lessons and Carols, Music Director, Barb Scheffter has chosen a bell choir arrangement, which emphasizes the lovely, haunting mystical quality of the music.

Lord at First Did Adam Make
The next musical selection is “Lord at First Did Adam Make.” The text is taken from a medieval English poem, “Adam Lay Ybounden,” depicting the Fall of Man. The poem came to be translated into modern English and was published in Some Ancient Christmas Carols by Davies Gilbert, 1822. Interestingly, a modern translation was the opening piece in the very first Lessons and Carols, in Truro in 1880. Although other melodies have been used since 1822, the piece that the Mt. Airy Presbyterian choir is performing this year was composed by our music director, Barb Scheffter. What is striking about the music’s support of the lyrics is the shift in mood, using both the gloom of Adam’s sin and its consequences in the verses, with the refrain’s upbeat, joyful conclusion that because Jesus took the punishment for sin, we can rejoice at Christmastime.

Advent Processional
This piece takes up the narrative where the first piece left off: Man sinned and is in need of a savior. This is a modern piece by lyricist and composer Anna Laura Page. The song is a festive celebration of the Christmas season. The beginning and the end of the piece take their context from Isaiah 40:2, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” and the middle section is based on Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”

O Come, O Come Emmanuel
The plain haunting melody, coupled with the words based of messianic prophecy, expresses the longing for deliverance from “lonely exile” by “God with us.” The piece was written in Latin, (Veni, Veni) in the 12th century as a chant. It was turned into English verse by John Mason Neale, an Anglican priest and scholar, in 1851. Another English translation was made in 1861 by Henry Sloane Coffin. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is one of the oldest Christmas hymns in our history. Each of the five verses expounds upon one of the names for the Messiah:

"Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14, Mt 1:23) means "God with us."
"Adonai" (Exodus 19:16) is a name for God, the giver of the law.
"Branch of Jesse" (Isaiah 11:1) refers to Jesus' lineage.
"Oriens" (Malachi 4:2, Luke 1:78-79) is the morning star or daystar.
"Key of David" (Isaiah 22:22) again refers to Jesus' lineage.

Comfort, Comfort Ye My People
The text for this piece is taken from Isaiah 40. The music was composed by Claude Goudimel, who was a French Protestant composer, who lived in the 16th century. Tonight’s offering was arranged by Howard Helvey, a contemporary musician, composer, and arranger from Ohio. This piece represents both the tradition and the fun of celebrating the birth of Christ.

The Holly and the Ivy
This piece is very old, thought to have been in existence since medieval times. Both the music and the lyrics have evolved over the years but what we sing today was found by a song collector, Cecil Sharp, in 1909. The song became standardized when Sir Henry Walford Davies arranged a version of it that is still performed at The Festival for Nine Lessons and Carols in Cambridge. The words are full of rich symbolism: Jesus is the holly. The leaves are evergreen and especially verdant at Christmastime. Their shape is flame-like, symbolizing God’s burning love for us. The thorns remind us of Jesus’s crown of thorns, and the berries, his shed blood. The ivy symbolizes Mary, as ivy is considered a feminine plant. “And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ” is woven throughout the song, just as in the English forests ivy entwines with the evergreen holly.

He is Born
This piece is a celebration of Christ’s birth, full of fun and energy. The lyrics echo many of the Psalms which call for music—singing and the playing of many diverse instruments—in our praising God. “Both the text and the tune date back to at least the mid-19th century—the tune found in R. Grosjean’s Airs des noêl lorrain (1862) and the French text in Dom G. Legeay’s Noêls anciens (1875-1876).” Mary MacDonald arranged the choral version.

What Strangers Are These
This is an old Scottish folk song, arranged movingly by American composer and arranger Dan Forrest. “What Strangers Are These” explores the humanness of Joseph as he leads his pregnant wife Mary as they travel wearily to Bethlehem, finding no room to rent, only a stable with animals. The perspective changes, and we become the seekers, with our search ending with the Christ child.

Joy to the World
Issac Watts wrote this popular carol as a response to Psalm 98, which is a psalm of praise. During Watts’s lifetime, it was common for English poets to rework the Psalms of the Bible with English poetic characteristics. Many scholars have written that “Joy to the World” was written as an anticipation of Christ’s second coming, but we can surely enjoy the rapture of God’s incarnation in the birth of Jesus! Leland Ryken concisely sums up the reason this carol is important, “We should celebrate Christmas with the joy that the hymn commands, and we should secure our position as recipients of the blessings of Christ’s messianic rule as delineated in the two concluding stanzas.”

Good News
The genre of this exhilarating piece is “traditional spiritual,” going back to early American roots and the African American community. The melody is joyful and contagious and the harmonies are deep and rich. One cannot help but join in the joyous celebration.

Bell Carol of the Kings
This piece is an intertwining of two carols: “We Three Kings” and “Carol of the Bells.” “We Three Kings” is an American carol, composed in Williamsport, Pennsylvania by John Henry Hopkins Jr. in 1857. “The Carol of the Bells” comes from a Ukrainian song,"Shchedryk," composed in 1914. Originally meant to wish loved ones prosperity in the new year, it was performed by the National Choir of the Ukraine at Carnegie Hall in English in 1922. It was translated into English by Peter J. Wilhousky, who took it from a New Year’s song to a Christmas Carol. Although he was an American, he was of Ukrainian decent.

Hallelujah Chorus
Our program concludes with Handel’s “Hallelujah!” When we ponder the greatness of God’s love for us and review the journey of the nine lessons, Adam’s sin, the promise of a Messiah, the journey of Joseph and Mary, the Shepherd’s adoration of the baby Jesus, and our salvation because of his sacrifice, we can only turn to God in astonishment and sing Hallelujah!