Squadrons and Troops of Angels at Christmas.

This afternoon I shared in a Zoom meeting of the Aberdeen Theological Circle. We were sharing our favourite Christmas Carol or poem. It was a thoroughly enjoyable mix of theology, spirituality, liturgy, testimony, music (several unaccompanied solos, one in German another in plain chant) showing such a variety of what matters to each of us as essential to our experience of Christmas.

One of the highlights was the discussion about the controversial practice of updating, dumbing down, pc editing and other liberties taken with other people's literary legacies!

 

The case in point was "Behold the great Creator makes Himself a house of clay." One of the verses changed to suit modern tastes is verse 3. Below is the original followed by the modern improvement.

 

This wonder struck the world amazed,

It shook the starry frame;

Squadrons of spirits stood and gazed,

Then down in troops they came.

 

This wonder all the world amazed,

it shook the starry frame;

the hosts of heaven stood to gaze,

and bless the Saviour's name.

 

Now of course there is uneasiness about the military imagery of squadrons and troops. But the author, Thomas Pestel (1585-1659) was a minor 17th Century poet, and one of the chaplains to King Charles I. No love was lost between him and the Puritan upstarts, and indeed in 1646 he was sequestrated from his living by the Westminster Assembly! In those conflicted decades, military terminology had its own familiar and rhetorical force. But need we use the same militarised imagery now? Hmmm.

 

Pestel's last verse expresses a weariness of conflict that is almost Isaianic in its hopeful longing:

Join then, all hearts that are not stone,

And all our voices prove,

To celebrate this Holy One,

The God of peace and love.