Have you ever yearned for a Unitarian Universalist Christmas Carol? There is one. At least one of the popular carols of the season was written by a Unitarian minister. It is “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” by Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears.

Sears was born in 1810 and studied law for a time before being called to the ministry. He first served as a missionary, supported by the American Unitarian Association, in the then distant and dangerous frontier area…around Toledo, Ohio. Most of his ministry, however, was spent at First Parish in Weyland, Massachusetts. It was there, in 1849 that he wrote the five stanza poem put to music the following year.

“It came upon the Midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the Earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“peace on the Earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.”

The lyrics are deeply Unitarian. The Christ-child is never mentioned. British carol scholar, Erik Routley, wrote of the piece that, “in its original form, the hymn is little more than an ethical song, extolling the worth and splendor of peace among men.” Unitarian indeed.
The hymn is included in most Protestant hymnals, but the third verse in which Sears is most condemnatory of war is omitted by several, the Methodist and Lutheran among them. Sears was writing with the Mexican War and our forcible occupation of the southwest much on his mind:

“and man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.”

Sears argued that it was just as wrong to kill in a war as in private life and that, as soldiers killed in a war at the orders of the President, the chief executive should be punished. “And does he make men shoot and kill? Then let some pious folk, a gallows build in Washington, and hand up Mr. Polk.”

I just discovered that even our own hymnal omits Sears’ fourth verse about the poor:

“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow…”

I will have to find out why. There is, without doubt, a sermon in that omission.

In this holiday season, I hope you find a space of peace in your heart and at your hearth. Listen to hear the angels sing.

Blessings,

Bill