I learned this year that one of my favorite Christmas songs was written during a very uncertain time in our country and world’s history. Noel Regney wrote the lyrics and Gloria Shayne composed the music. The pair was married at the time, and wrote “Do You Hear What I Hear?” in October 1962 as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Regney was inspired to write the lyrics, “Said the night wind to the little lamb, ‘Do you see what I see?’” and “Pray for peace, people everywhere,” after watching babies being pushed in strollers on the sidewalks of New York City. Shayne stated in an interview years later that neither could personally perform the entire song at the time they wrote it because of the emotions surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. “Our little song broke us up. You must realize there was a threat of nuclear war at the time.”
The song describes how the word of the birth of the baby Jesus is relayed to higher upon ever higher authority. The message originates with the night wind, which whispers to the little lamb. The lamb reports the message to the shepherd, who in turn conveys the news to the king. The king eventually spreads the message to “people everywhere.”
Bing Crosby made the song into a hit when he recorded his own version of it on October 21, 1963 - approximately one month before John F. Kennedy was assassinated,
Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassination of a president; the unspeakable massacre of 20 children and 7 adults in Newtown, Connecticut - sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? And yet none of these tragic events could discontinue God’s love and erase the hope that is eternally present because of God’s presence in the world - Emmanuel, God with us!
The free will of human beings is a gift given but when abused becomes an unspeakable evil. My mentor and teacher, Dr. Fred Craddock, said it best when he defined sin as “good out of place.” “Free will” out of place becomes the death of a president in 1963 and a massacre of precious children and their teachers/leaders in 2012. “Free will” in its proper place became a nuclear war averted and peace in 1962.
“Pray for Peace, people everywhere. Listen to what I say. The child, the child, sleeping in the night; He will bring us goodness and light. He will bring us goodness and light.”
Merry Christmas! I love you all - Dr. Terry Walton, senior pastor, GFUMC
