This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
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The reason for the season
The reason
'I wish you every good thing that you'd wish upon yourself'
was the greeting on the card that I received.
I felt a pang of sadness as I placed it on the shelf,
at the poverty of hope the words achieved.
For it is the Christmas season,
when the maker of mankind
transcended human reason,
went beyond thoughts of mortal mind.
If all God's gifts were limited to what I could conceive,
what a sad and poor existence that would be!
I'd think I had to work to earn the presents I receive,
and the focus of my life would just be me.
But it is the Christmas season,
when I celebrate the birth
of Jesus, that's the reason
for excitement, here on this earth.
My faith is not a matter of man reaching up to gods
if it were, how could I know I'd got it right?
Religions in the world would be all equal, all at odds,
and with nothing to adjudicate their fight.
But it is the Christmas season,
and I feel that I must speak
for Jesus: he's the reason
to be certain, for he's unique.
The scriptures are historical, they tell of witnessed facts,
of the impact Jesus made in Palestine:
the evidence is set out in the Gospels and the Acts
for a resurrection faith, a Man Divine.
So now in the Christmas season
for my friend I've news to share
of Jesus - he's the reason
that I'm certain - that God is there.
"I wish you many more good things than you could ever dream"
is my greeting on the card that I will send,
"For life is so much bigger, more profound and more extreme,
than the heart of man is tempted to pretend.
So now in this Christmas season
won't you listen to the word,
of Jesus? What's the reason
for believers, who call him 'Lord'?"
Words and tune copyright © John Hartley 2005.
Story behind the song
The lines of this song were penned after a friend posted a complaint, on the Christian Songwriting Organisation e-mail chat list, about the secularization of Christmas greetings: the way we say "Happy Holidays" rather than "Happy Christmas", and other such things. Part of this is a desire not to offend those who hold different views. The posting took me back to a memory of a card received several years ago.
"We wish you every good that you would wish for yourself at this season" was the greeting, and the card had a picture of a narrowboat peacefully steering down a canal in a winter scene. As a keen Christian the card saddened me - here was a friend who clearly wished the best, but who didn't see that the best could be better than our human horizons.
In the lyrics I wanted to tackle this in two ways. I wanted to say that the best could be far better than our imaginations. I also wanted to say that we hold our Christian faith because of solid evidence - and a truly open-minded well-wisher would be open to considering this evidence for himself. It was because of some friends challenging me to consider the evidence that I became a committed Christian myself, so I know the power of evidence in my own life.
Mischievous fellow that I am, I sent one back. It had a narrowboat with Concorde-style wings, zooming along through the clouds at high velocity. The greeting was "I wish you far more than you would wish for yourself at this season". And inside was the bible verse "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than anything we can ask of conceive ...".
Let's never forget we have a GREAT God!
A couple of remarks about the music may also be appropriate. I've long admired the "patter songs" of W S Gilbert and J A Sullivan in their light operas, in particular the one in Ruddigore which contains the words "If I had been so lucky as to have an elder brother ...", and the beginning of the verse is in conscious imitation of this style.
And the tubular bells at the start of the chorus do as much "proper" change ringing as I can get into this type of song: the eight bells start in "rounds", do the first change of "Plain Bob Major", then the second change, back to the first change, and finish in rounds. It may not be much of a sample of the sound of church bells, but it would at least be possible to ring such changes on bells in a tower at Christmas time.
John Hartley
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.