Songs about Christmas

I just listened to two new standard Christmas songs which are not regularly played or known and wondered at why it is that artists and storytellers continue to feel the need to write a song, a poem, or a story about the time in which Jesus was brought into the world.

Years ago when I was writing for a correspondent course in Children's Literature the Detroit Newspapers had a contest for stories about Christmas. I wrote two stories but did not submit either. I did at one time share the birth of Christ story with a member of a discussion group. Then I wrote another about a child who had suffered the death of his mother and who was trying to adjust to a difficult time due to that untimely death.

Many people suffer more violently at holiday times than any other time since so much stress is placed on family, gift giving, and the need to be a part of a commercial affair rather than a spiritual remembrance.

Should Christmas mean a lot of Christmas presents under a tree? Who can get the most or the biggest or the best? That is how Christmas is basically taught but there is also a time spent going to a church where the preacher teaches about the star that led the Wise Men and the Shepherds to find the small babe who lay in a manger in the back of a busy hotel or inn that had not had a reservation made for this child who came into the world expectantly believe it or not. His birth was a known fact long before it happened.

So Jesus had to sleep on a straw bed and his mother, a young child herself, had to suffer the discomfort of a birth delivery in the rear of an inn while her husband attended to her. Miraculously the child was born and it followed that Mary and Joseph were not alone for long because soon they were visited by the wiseemen and the shepherds who came to see this strange spectacle of a child whose radiance was such that not only was there a star overhead but also a great light that shone round about him.