Each year it seems I gravitate towards one favorite Christmas carol to teach Chloe. Last year was O Come, O Come Immanuel. That classic hymn is one of my all-time faves because of the rich lyrics, minor key, and depth of ideas. And you've not experienced full cute-osity until you hear a preschooler sing the word "Israel".This year I'm teaching Chloe the little known Star Carol. When I first heard the song on Simon and Garfunkel's Old Friends album, I was immediately captivated by the moving harmonies and simple lovely lyrics. (Take a listen for yourself here.)
What I think I like best about the song is the last verse (lyrics below). It's easy to teach the Christmas story "facts" to the kiddos this time of year. But to actually make a purposeful application that will resonate with small children is tricky; this song nails it on the last verse.
It's not a hugely deep or theological application, mind you. But it's a great place to start. It's simple enough that Chloe gets it (pretty sure O Come, O Come Immanuel was more than a wee bit over her head last year) and we can talk about what it means to "make a place for Jesus" in our lives.
Which Christmas song/s are singing a lot this year?
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A Star Carol
3 comments:
alicia, I love that song, too! I have it on one of my many compilation Christmas cd's. I'm glad you have picked it as your song of 2009! :-) My all time fav is O Holy Night, especially verse two. We had our first snow last night so the Christmas Spirit is running high for me today!
I have never heard that song...my it is beautiful!! As far as my favorite Christmas song...I love them all and how each one brings back memories of Christmas time when I was a little girl.
I have never heard that song either. I will have to listen to it.
We are trying to get our church family in the Christmas spirit all month long this year by singing Christmas songs (in French obviously) all month long. Some are ones we know that have been translated. We started asking people which Christmas songs were the most familiar, and we weren't getting many answers. They said they mainly just sing them once a year at church and obviously you can only sing so many on one day and wouldn't learn them by heart after one time. We're not trying to bring American culture over by making a big deal out of Christmas songs, but to sing about Jesus' birth and more importantly the reason he was born -- we don't want them to miss out! Last Sunday, we sang two songs of which only one was a little known and we're going to sing them again this Sunday and add two new ones. We "practiced" them with the group at Bible study last night, and in that informal setting, they were free to talk about how they loved learning them. It was so exciting for us to finish the four verses and then hear someone say, "Can we sing that again?" So...we're trying to learn Christmas songs in French this year. Wow -- this ended up long. :-)
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