In The Bleak Midwinter

“In the Bleak Midwinter” is one of my favorite Christmas hymns. It is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, published in 1870. The hymn first appeared set to music in a 1906 hymnal.

The first verse sets the mood:

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Rossetti wrote out of her own experience if winters in England. Anyone who grew up in a northern climate can relate to the image of cold winds blowing and the ground hard as iron, water as hard as stone. I can remember winters like that in northern New England. With climate change we’re not seeing those typical conditions as much, especially in balmy Connecticut. However, the image persists.

The best way to see how this tag team of Christmas and winter functions is to see what Christmas is like outside of New England. We take for granted the Currier and Ives images of riding a sleigh carrying the Christmas tree home where pumpkin pie and a roast await, with the fireplace burning brightly. My first glimmer of this was in Arizona a number of years ago. Anita and I were there on our honeymoon, and we went to a Lowe’s to see what they had for desert plants which we can’t get here. I have the two cacti that we bought in my office at the church for the winter. It was mid-October, and just like anywhere else the Christmas decorations were up. Bear in mind that this was Phoenix, Arizona, hardly a winter climate. They had artificial Christmas trees for sale. It looked incredibly out of place, in the same league as the bright green lawn we saw in front of a Phoenix mansion, sprinklers running at full tilt.

It occurred to me that many people living in the area were transplants from somewhere else, people from colder regions where a live spruce or fir tree was not exotic, and this appealed to nostalgia for home.

I was in the Holy Land six and a half years ago in March, and it was cold some of the time, but not winter as we experience it. Jesus wasn’t born in December anyway. The leaders of the early Church put his birthday there to counteract the Roman celebration of the Saturnalia, a bawdy, raucous holiday that they didn’t want their people celebrating.  Better to be celebrating Christ’s birth than getting blind drunk, although that hasn’t stopped anyone lately. For some, Christmas is the Saturnalia.

For many, winter is difficult. Those who grew up in northern climates often eat more, exercise less, drink more, and wrestle with depression. It’s no wonder that Russia has one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world.

So, even if Jesus wasn’t born during the winter, the image of Christ coming to us in our winter is still an apt one. Jesus comes to us not when we are feeling good about everything, but when we struggle with all that bedevils us. That’s the meaning of the Incarnation.