Patrick Comerford
We are in the last days of Advent, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. At noon each day this Advent, I am offering an image or two as part of my own ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and an Advent or Christmas carol, hymn or song.
I have been involved all morning with Santa's visit to the Christmas Market in Stony Stratford. It is great fun, and I am thankful it is not snowing. But in this cold winter weather and this costume, it feels like the bleak mid-winter despite all the warm responses of children and adults alike. So, my images for my Advent Calendar at noon today are of snow some years ago in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on a bleak mid-winter morning during a weekend when I had been invited to preach in the college chapel.
My choice of a carol or hymn today is ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). For many it is closely associated with the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols, broadcast each Christmas Eve from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.
Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ became popular among choirs after it was included it in the BBC broadcasts of the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, using the 1911 setting by Harold Edwin Darke (1888-1976). He had once been the conductor of the choir, and his setting of the poem as a carol included his beautiful and delicate organ accompaniment.
But the tune most often associated with ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is Cranham, composed in 1906 by Gustav Holst (1874-1934).
The poem had been published for the first time seven years earlier in Christina Rossetti’s Poetic Works, 10 years after her death. It was republished in 1906 The English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Holst’s setting, and it quickly became a popular Christmas carol. Today ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is one of the most popular and best-loved carols.
Christina Rossetti was part of the Victorian arts-and-crafts movement and the pre-Raphaelite movement. She was a leading advocate of women’s rights, a campaigner against slavery and war, and a prominent member of the Anglo-Catholic movement. She wrote ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ in 1872 in answer to a request from a magazine. But, like a lot of writers, she must have been frustrated that she never saw its publication.
So it took over 30 years, more than a generation, before this poem was first sung as a Christmas carol. Ever since then, though, it has been a firm Christmas favourite, and has been recorded by the King’s Singers, Julie Andrews, the Moody Blues, the Pet Shop Boys, James Taylor, Alison Crowe, Moya Brennan, Celtic Woman, Sarah McLachlan, Sarah Brightman and Loreena McKennitt.
But I still find this popularity surprising, because this is no popular, cosy, comfortable Christmas carol. Instead its images are harsh and bleak, and in the uncomfortable political climate in the world today tey are challenging and demanding once again.
In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone:
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.
Our God, heav’n cannot hold him,
nor earth sustain;
heav’n and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign:
in the bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
the Lord God almighty,
Jesus Christ.
Enough for him, whom cherubim
worship night and day,
a breast full of milk
and a manger-ful of hay;
enough for him, whom angels
fall down before,
the ox and ass and camel
which adore.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air;
but his mother only,
in her maiden bliss,
worshipped the beloved
with a kiss.
What can I give him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him —
give my heart.
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