faithMile

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCnHJ5QqK4[/youtube]

The Coventry Carol – Alison Moyet

This is a beautiful, haunting Christmas ballad, but not a pretty or happy one. It tells of a story that is associated with Christmas, but foreshadows Christ’s death as well. In the Christmas story, wise men go to greet the newborn Christ, but King Herod also wants to greet him. Only Herod’s greeting is not to honor the child, but to kill him. Herod doesn’t know which child is the foretold messiah, so he decides to slaughter all newborn males under the age of two in the kingdom. This carol tells that story from the point of view of the mothers of those children.

Of course, Herod’s men don’t find Jesus, and so Mary doesn’t join in the mourning chorus of women. However, three decades later she will have occasion to join these women and say goodbye. I wonder if some of the people in the audience at the crucifixion who were yelling to crucify Christ were yelling not in anger, but in pain. Perhaps they realized that he was the one Herod was searching for when he killed their children. Maybe they wanted to see a miracle in order to know that their sons did not die in vain. Maybe they really hoped that he would save himself from the cross and justify their loss. And so they yelled “crucify him” because if their sons had to die, then so did Mary’s. Or save himself and prove who he was.

And perhaps, over the next week, when news of Christ’s missing body and sightings of him trickled through the town, these mothers were finally comforted.

Click here for the Coventry Carol wikipedia page, with history of the song itself.