Every December, I make my annual trip to the basement to unbox our family’s collection of Christmas music on LPs, CDs, cassette tapes, and, yes, even reel-to-reel tapes. Many of these songs have been with me since childhood. Some of them are recent discoveries, whether old but new to me or new releases. We don’t discriminate against genres in our home, either: the King’s College Choir stands alongside John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison” and Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis.” I tend to forget that normal music exists until sometime in mid-January.
As I’ve been sorting through our collection of physical media and digital playlists, a few songs have stood out to me. These aren’t necessarily my favorite Christmas songs but rather “hidden gems” that you’re not likely to find on a Spotify playlist. What stands out is their ability to capture and articulate rich theological themes from Advent and Christmas in a three-minute pop song. Here are three standouts.
“Stable Boy Song” by The Mountain Goats
John Darnielle, founder and frontman of the Mountain Goats, was raised Catholic and has a complicated relationship with religion. But that hasn’t stopped him from exploring the complexities of faith and doubt through his music. This song was recorded in 1994, during the early days when it was just Darnielle and his guitar recording on a cassette-deck boombox. It was released on the compilation album De Avonden X-Mas 2002, and while only 100 copies were made, it lives on through the internet.
This is the only Christmas song Darnielle has written. It’s a simple song written from the perspective of a stable boy who is preparing the manger for a special guest.
What could capture the spirit of Advent better than these lines?: “My mom told me that someday someone like you would come to set things right / Until you come, I’ll keep this place ready for you.”
“This Old Town Tonight” by Beki Hemingway and Jonathan Rundman
Hemingway and Rundman are independent singer-songwriters who previously collaborated on various projects, including a little Christmas EP titled Presents. It was recorded in 2001 in an apartment on Armitage Avenue in Chicago, and only 300 copies were made. Hemingway recalls that they had just seen the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and were “intrigued by bluegrass themes, classic hymns, and Christmas carols.” “This Old Town Tonight” feels like a song you’ve known all your life, even when you’re listening to it for the first time.
Even though the melody is consistent throughout the song and (as with many folk songs) there isn’t much dynamism, the lyrics steadily build toward an overwhelming crescendo. Where the song begins with themes of stability and predictability (“Nothing much changes in the quiet streets here in the City of David”), it gradually recognizes the significance of the newborn Messiah, finally buckling under the weight of the glory it beholds: “The center of the universe is in our city, resting in a young mother’s arms.”
“If You Were Born Today” by Low
While Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, the two pillars of Low, never achieved superstar status, they certainly gained a cult following. Their minimalist and sometimes experimental approach to rock music didn’t really lend itself to the radio hit-making machine, but their influence on the contemporary music scene is profound. Parker died from cancer in 2022, making Hey What (2021) Low’s final album.
Most Low fans are familiar with their Christmas LP of 1999, but for the most part it remains a hidden gem. While the track “If You Were Born Today” isn’t the most upbeat selection on the album (and probably not a great choice for your holiday party playlist), it captures feelings of spiritual longing and lament rarely found in contemporary Christmas music.
The song wonders what it might be like if Christ were born in today’s world and imagines that we would kill him “by age eight.” Of course, the paradox is that “today’s world” has already been affected by Christ’s Incarnation. Yet the world’s healing is far from complete. The song simultaneously laments the brokenness of the world and rejoices in the fact that God did, in fact, make his love incarnate by giving us his Son.
I’m reminded of the Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe’s words in God Matters (1987): “We cannot live without love and yet we are afraid of the destructive creative power of love. We need and deeply want to be loved and to love, and yet when that happens it seems a threat, because we are asked to give ourselves up, to abandon our selves; and so when we meet love we kill it” (218).
Taken together, these songs resist the tendency to turn Christmas into background noise. They linger instead on waiting, recognition, and loss, in a world that is changed by the Incarnation and yet still aching for its full meaning to be realized. They invite us to “weep with those who weep” and “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Rom. 12:15) and to look for light in the darkness, even when the world fails to comprehend it (John 1:5).
The Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem is associate professor of moral theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and theologian in residence at the Church of St. Michael & St. George.
