I have many joyful memories bound up with Christmas. Few of them involve Christ, but many involve the church. Most involve singing. More than any other time of year, Christmas is a time that we've decided to socially normalize ordinary people singing together, especially outside of a church service.
Yet Christmas carols remain an oddity. Many have sunk into the popular culture; we sing about the mythic visits of Gabriel and the Magi with the same blithe unbelief we sing about the exploits of the jolly obese one and his airborne caribou.
Most of the Christmas carols that are popular, of course, are the ones that either plainly tell the story (e.g. "The First Noel") or ones that are more atmospheric than religious – "Silent Night," "Still, Still, Still," and so on. But as you delve into the Christmas carols that the American public hasn't adopted, the ones the Church keeps for itself... They get downright weird. And I'm not just talking about "Coventry Carol" talking about the Massacre of the Innocents.
We've already looked at "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree," which is a lovely song with some unusual imagery. But the carol I love to hate, personally, is "I Saw Three Ships." With some of the repetition abridged:
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning!
And what was in those ships all three
On Christmas Day in the morning?
Our Savior Christ and His lady
On Christmas Day in the morning!
Pray, wither sailed those ships all three
On Christmas Day in the morning?
O, they sailed into Bethlehem
On Christmas Day in the morning!
They... what? So, to be clear, this is Bethlehem:
Mary, her newborn son, and the unmentioned Joseph did not arrive by ship in Bethlehem. Let alone three separate ships. Besides their lack of access to ships and Israel's historical lack of seafaring skill, Bethlehem is land-locked. The closest major body of water is the Dead Sea. What the hell is this song talking about? Theories abound, but it's clear that none of them are Jesus and Mary on Christmas Day.
Let's take another one. "The Seven Joys of Mary" is a medieval Marian devotional song that (for some reason) has become a Christmas carol in the modern day, much as "O Sing a Song of Bethlehem" has. It talks about all the things through Jesus' life that gave Mary joy. The first verse is slightly Christmassy:
The first good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of one;
To see the blessed Jesus Christ
When He was first her son:
When He was first her son, good man:
And blessed may He be,
Both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To all eternity.
But keep going to the sixth "joy":
The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of six;
To see her own son, Jesus Christ
Upon the crucifix:
Upon the crucifix, good man:
And blessed may He be,
Both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To all eternity.
I sincerely doubt that Mary felt any joy at Jesus' crucifixion, regardless of whether his resurrection three days later occurred in fact. To believe so would be to think some very strange things about Mary's relationship with her son.
But the weirdest spot might just be reserved for "Adam Lay Ybounden," written circa 1400:
Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took.
As clerkës finden written
In their book.
Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never Our Lady,
A-been heaven's queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was!
Therefore we may singen
Deo gratias!
Middle English, even "converted" Middle English can be somewhat challenging. But that basically says that Adam (and by proxy, his descendants, humanity) lay under the curse of sin for thousands of years. As a Satanist, I don't care much for the doctrine of original sin, but as a former Christian, I get it. Okay so far.
But then it takes the inexplicable twist: Had Adam not sinned ("Ne had the apple taken been"), Mary never would have been Queen of Heaven, so good thing Adam sinned! If you subscribe to Christian belief and think sin is bad, how in the world could original sin be... good?
This is a real belief that crops up through the centuries among various Christian scholars called the felix culpa (blessed fall, happy sin, etc.). That the corrupted world saved by Christ is in some sense better than if the world had never fallen, because it will eventually be healed by his return.
From a Satanic perspective, I barely know where to begin with this, because I take issue with so many layers of it. If sin is bad, it's ludicrous to think that original sin could be good. If the broken state of the world is due to sin, it's ludicrous to think that its redemption could be worth the current brokenness.
And if God was the author of original sin in order to achieve this outcome, how completely unfair and unjust to place that guilt on humanity! One might even call such a plan monstrous, worthy of a sociopath.
As a Satanist, I absolutely believe the brokenness of the world has to do with the first humans, but has nothing to do with their fruit consumption. It's not the result of any plan, beneficent or monstrous either one. It has to do with the fact that the first humans – and in fact, all humans – were and are merely animals like any others, despite our great powers of intellect and metacognition. We fight to survive, we prioritize survival of ourselves and our own, and we take any chance to get ahead or get laid.
Christmas is a time at which we idealize ourselves. We want to believe that we're special – and we are, because we're the only us that has ever been or ever will be. We want to believe that there's a plan for good to come out of evil, order out of chaos, and love out of cruel survival. But the reality is that those ideals don't come from an external force, they come from ourselves. We make plans for ourselves. We make order for ourselves. We give and find love for ourselves.
And that is something we can celebrate this Solstice.
Hail Satan! Amen.