A brief homily for the 7:00 PM Service of Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024.
Some weeks ago, Adam shared a draft of this service with me. Among the familiar music and the much-loved carols, I noticed a few anthems that seemed new to me, or represented arrangements I did not know. But as I called up these anthems on YouTube and compared settings, choirs, and versions of the pieces, I soon had a favorite.
For some weeks, I’ve been obsessed with the Sans Day Carol. It’s also known as the St. Day Carol, after the village of St. Day in Cornwall, England.
Though the music is by John Rutter, the carol was first discovered by a priest named Gilbert Hunter Doble. But Doble heard it from—and get this— from the head gardener, W.D. Watson, of the Borough of Penzance! How wonderful is that? Can’t you just see this gardener going around singing his heart out in Cornish and Father Doble stops and says, “You’ve got to teach me that carol.” Gardner Watson said he learned it from another Cornish man around 1900. And so, it was translated from Cornish into English, and eventually arranged by John Rutter in the version we heard tonight.
You may wonder, as I did, about the various colors of berries mentioned in the carol. Well, they exist! Black berries exist. It seems that most cultivars of the inkberry produce black fruit on the female plants, hence the name inkberry. But there are also cultivars with white fruit, including ‘Ivory Queen’. Inkberry also has a green variety called Green Magic. And, of course, most of the hollies we might see have red berries.
What I most love about the carol—in addition to the strange color scheme—is the blending of joy and sorrow, of Christmas with Easter. The imagery of death mixed in with life reminds us that the truth of Christmas lasts through the year. Christmas and Easter are linked by the love that saves us all.
God has come into the world as Jesus Christ to be like us and to experience everything we experience—the good and the bad, the painful and the extraordinary.
The message of Christmas, so beautifully summed up in the carol, is Emmanuel—God is with us, no matter what.