Back to: The Twelve Days of Christmas Carols
On December 24, 1865, Phillips Brooks was half a world away from home in the middle east. He was the Episcopal rector of Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. He was also wearied – Lincolns’ assassination played on his mind.
Phillips Brooks was born in Boston, December 13th, 1835. He came of a long line of Puritan ancestors, many of whom had been Congregational clergymen. His parents became connected with the Episcopal Church, and he was reared in the strict ways of the Evangelical wing of that Church. He had the typical Boston education, the Latin School and then Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1855. He was then for a few months a teacher in the Latin School, but there he had the humiliating experience of complete failure. He soon decided to enter the ministry, and studied at Alexandria Seminary, in Virginia. (At his graduation he preached his first sermon at St. George’s Episcopal in Fredericksburg). In 1859 he became rector of a small church in Philadelphia. Here his sermons attracted much attention, and in 1861 he was called to be rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in the same city.
Although he was not Lincoln’s pastor and felt ill-prepared to preside over the ceremony, Brooks was asked to speak at Lincoln’s funeral because of his reputation as an orator. He found words to fit the moment, but seeing a great leader senselessly slain and the exhaustion of the effort itself left him worn out and badly needing a spiritual rebirth. Brooks then took a sabbatical and left the United States to tour the Middle East. It was a trip that dramatically changed his life and renewed his calling and gave us a hymn that is sung every Christmas.
On Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, the American felt an urge to get away from the hundreds of other pilgrims who had journeyed to the Holy Land for the holidays. Although warned that he might encounter thieves, the preacher borrowed a horse and set out across the desolate and unforgiving countryside.
“After an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem,” so he wrote home in Christmas week of 1865. “It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. . . . Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. . . . As we passed, the shepherds were still “keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold.”
Under a clear sky, the first stars just beginning to emerge, he rode into the still tiny and remote village of Bethlehem. He recalled the story of the birth of his Savior, and by being present in the place in which Jesus was born, was able to add vivid detail to the familiar tale in Scripture. There, on streets almost unchanged since biblical times, Brooks felt as if he were surrounded by the spirit of the first Christmas. He would later tell his family and friends that the experience was so overpowering that it would forever be “singing in my soul.”
“I was standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I know well, telling each other of the Saviour’s birth.”
Nothing more was done on these impressions until 3 years later. When Brooks looked ahead to the holiday season of 1868, he again thought of riding into Bethlehem at dusk and the church service that had followed. This time, he didn’t force the words out, he simply relived the experience and jotted down the lines that seemed to float into his head. His thoughts soon took the form of a poem.
Lewis Redner, the church organist takes up the story to try come up with the hymn’s melody for Christmas day’s service. “As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”?’ I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony.”
For the next six years “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was a Philadelphia favorite. Printed in cheap leaflet form, almost every church in the city used it during their Christmas services. In 1892 (some twenty-four years after its first appearance) Brooks’ carol was given a place as a church hymn in the Episcopal hymnal. By the time of Phillips Brooks’ death in 1893, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” had become one of the most beloved Christmas carols in the world. He died as one of the most famous preachers of his time but his hymn ultimately has kept his fame alive in our time.