The other day I was reminiscing about Christmas caroling in western NY with our little country church. We were hard-core: bundled up, a caravan of cars traveling through the snow covered hills and piling out at the homes of shut-ins and elderly folks and other people on the list each year. We would sing a few carols and then shout out the last song —We Wish You a Merry Christmas! —cheeks pink with cold and clouds of breath hanging in the air. We also knew which houses had cookies and homemade caramels that they passed out to us after we sang. Today’s Christmas song is Soul Cake from Sting’s If On A Winter’s Night” album. Soul cakes are small spiced cakes marked with a cross that originated in the middle ages. Thought to be associated with All Hallows Eve, when children would roam the streets singing and asking for soul cakes, the song has become connected with Christmas and caroling. 

Whenever I would listen to the Winter Solstice V album from Windham Hill, I loved this pensive track, My Heart is Always Moving, with its gorgeous violin and organ building through the song, but I didn’t know much about it. The song is a Danish/Norwegian carol from 1732, by a Danish Lutheran bishop, Hans Adolph Brorson.  The English translation of the lyrics is as follows:

My heart always wanders to where Jesus once was born.
There I collect and unify my thoughts.
There my longing finds its home, there my faith has its treasure;
I can never forget you O blessed Christmas night

The sparrow has its nest and safe place of rest
A swallow can expect a peaceful night’s shelter
The lion has his cave where he can find rest
— Must my God take shelter in another’s stable and straw?

Ach! I want to open my heart and soul
And full of longing sigh, oh come Jesus here within
This is no stranger’s housing, you bought it of yourself
Here can you safely stay, swaddled in my heart

I want to scatter palm branches around your crib,
For you, for you alone will I live and will I die.
Oh Come let my soul find within you its pure blissful moment,
That you were born here deep in my heart’s depths

On a gloomy, rainy December day, this Merle Haggard song seems appropriate. “If we make it through December, everything’s gonna be all right I know.” This version is by Over the Rhine, from their Blood Oranges In The Snow album.
If We Make It Through December