“At Bethlehem I had my birth.”

Last updated on: December 25, 2024 at 4:34 pm by Dan Peterson

0 Comments

“At Bethlehem I had my birth.” 2024-12-25T16:34:27-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

First of all, Merry Christmas to all! I hope that you’ve had a joyous Christmas season and that you will enjoy this day to the full with family and friends and food and music and whatever else will make for a very satisfying and memorable time.

Arthur Hughes, “The Nativity” (1858)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

On Monday last, Meridian Magazine republished a Christmas-themed column that my late and still sorely missed friend Bill Hamblin and I originally wrote for the 11 December 2015 edition of the Deseret News. Perhaps you’ll enjoy it or gain something from it: “The Nativity, According to Luke.”

Here are a few of the other Christmas-related columns that I wrote for the Deseret News:

“Defending the faith: Christmas celebrates part of divine plan”

“Christmas in the Holy Land — somber, yet triumphant” (16 December 2010)

“Pure love led Christ to descend the courts of glory” (22 December 2011)

And here are three that I wrote for Meridian Magazine:

““I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”: How Christ Transforms Darkness into Light” (11 December 2018)

“Christmas Beyond Christendom” (19 December 2023)

“Christmas and a Condescending God” (28 December 2021)

Well, I was intending to gather quite a few more of these. But it turns out that — certainly for a tech-illiterate person such as I (and I suspect that I’m not entirely alone in my computer-clumsiness), and perhaps inescapably — the process of locating my past columns is very cumbersome, inefficient, and time-consuming.

Which raises a question: I’ve thought for years about trying to gather past columns and writings of mine (and other things, such as speaking engagements and the like) onto a personal website. (I’ve never had one. And I don’t really know how to create one.) I simply have no idea whether there would be even the slightest interest in such a thing beyond myself and perhaps my pet tortoise, who depends upon me for his lettuce and cantaloupe and winter lodgings.

An aerial view of the Bountiful Utah Temple
(LDS Media Library), very near the place where I’m currently typing

We spent last evening with my wife’s extended family up in Davis County, including a separate visit with her father, who will turn ninety-eight early next week. He was doing reasonably well and living on his own (across from the parking structure for the Bountiful Utah Temple) until a few months ago, but his health has now taken a distinct turn for the worse and he’s living in a care facility.

Driving back down to Utah Valley, we took our incredibly cute five-year-old granddaughter to what I think is called Orem City Center Park, which is located between Center Street and First North, to the east of the Orem Public Library.

It is a place of sheer wonder. The lighting of the trees is absolutely spectacular, and our granddaughter ran about in rapturous delight among them until we told her that it was simply too late and too cold and that we needed to get her home.

The brilliant and varied lighting of the trees reminded me of the indescribable colors to which many accounts of near-death experiences refer. Here are a couple of short notes that I’ve written on that subject:

“Even Some Colors I’d Never Seen Before”

“Colors That Don’t Exist on Earth: Insights into the Way the Skies in Heaven Look”

If you’re in the area and you have children, please take them, while you can, to see these lights (and to get out and wander and wonder among them) after dark and before they’re removed with the end of the holidays.

A large copy of Brian Kershisnik’s “Nativity” hangs in my living room all year round. (I hope that he won’t mind my sharing it here.) I love the joyous fascination of the angels with the newborn Redeemer.

In a comment posted here two or three days ago, a reader of this blog named Raymond Takashi Swenson shared a very Latter-day Saint Christmas poem that he had written, entitled “Name the Angels.” I like it very much, and I wrote to him seeking permission to include his poem in the main body of this blog. I haven’t heard back from him yet. However, reasoning that he has already shared it here and that I’m simply making it a bit more prominent — and knowing that it will seem at least slightly less relevant after Christmas Day — I’ve decided to go ahead and post it here. If he would rather that I not, I’ll remove it instantly upon receiving his request. In the meanwhile, here it is:

NAME the ANGELS

Come name the angels, one by one,
Who sang the birth of God’s own Son:

How Adam Michael led them all
To praise Salvation from the Fall.

How Noah Gabriel rejoiced,
The Spirit Prison’s freedom voiced.

How Moses, giver of the Law,
Its true fulfillment sang with awe.

Isaiah saw Emanuel
Make earth a holy place to dwell.

And in their midst–
Were You and I!–
Our voices joined in the great, glad cry!

(c) Raymond Takashi Swenson

A Nativity by the great Sandro Botticelli, one of my favorite Renaissance painters (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I return yet again to the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: I’ve been sharing a piece of Christmas music once daily, on average, since the beginning of the month of December, and I yet haven’t even begun to make a serious dent in the number of offenses inflicted upon the Winter Solstice season by theists and theism. Nonetheless, today’s will be the final entry in my Christmas musical catalog, and I’ve selected a relatively new piece that many probably don’t associate with the holiday. (It would work equally well at Easter or, for that matter, on any day of the year.) The lyrics of my selection, “The Lord of the Dance,” were written by Sydney Carter in 1963 and then set to the tune of an old American Shaker hymn.

I haven’t found a performance of the hymn that is entirely to my liking. But this version, performed by the Marionettes Chorale, from Trinidad and Tobago, in an arrangement by the late Sir David Willcocks, is quite beautiful:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth:
At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee,
But they would not dance and they wouldn’t follow me;
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John;
They came with me and the dance went on:

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame:
The holy people said it was a shame.
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone;
But I am the dance, and I still go on:

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high,
And they left me there on a cross to die:

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

They cut me down and I leapt up high;
I am the life that’ll never, never die.
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me:
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.