This Christmas, many of us will hear, hum or sing along to “Joy to the World,” the perduring 1719 Christmas hymn penned by the prolific hymnster Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Based on Psalm 97 from the Hebrew Scriptures, “Joy to the World” remains, according to some accounts, the most widely published Christmas hymn in North America.
It is the “Born to Run” of the Christmas carol world.
And, intriguingly, it is also one of the most ecologically fertile Christmas hymns ever composed.
The second verse, for example, while encouraging “men” in their joyous proclaiming of Jesus’ birth, doesn’t stop with the human family. It notes that “fields and floods” as well as “rocks, hills and plains/repeat the sounding joy.” The entire planet joins with the angels in celebrating the Nativity. Thus, the hope and promise of Christmas is meant for all the created world, not just the unfeathered bipeds, i.e., us.
The hymn could just as easily and aptly be called “Joy to the Earth.”
Watts’ lyrics point to a wider truth about Christmas, a truth sometimes buried in the bustle and buying of the season. Jesus’ birth, for Christians, is a cosmic event, proclaimed by a star, beckoning sages from well outside the geographic and cultural borders of first-century Palestine.
The first witnesses to the birth, after Mary and Joseph, are barn animals ― oxen, cattle, sheep ― which, according to some folkloric traditions, were granted the power of human speech that night to proclaim Jesus’ birth. And, according to the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament, the first to be summoned to the manger were not kings and religious heavyweights, but those who worked close to the land, rustic, anonymous shepherds in the surrounding fields.
Like any birth, the birth of Jesus is, in the Christian imagination at least, a call to co-creation.
I recall a friend of mine while his wife and he were awaiting the birth of their first child. Amid setting up the nursery and attending prenatal classes, he mused that his life would not change that much once the baby arrived. He would still be able to golf on weekends, watch football and carry on pretty much “business as usual.”
Then his son was born, and his life was changed forever. Gone were the leisurely golf games, the weekend football viewing marathons with the boys, replaced with sleepless nights with a sleepless infant, the zombie-like days at work, the frenzied balance of child-rearing and bread-winning, the realization that his life had now become inextricably bound up with a new life that he had helped bring into the world, and for which he was responsible.
In short, the baby rocked his world.
In a similar way, for Christians, the baby Jesus rocks their world. Like any birth, the birth of Jesus is, in the Christian imagination, an invitation to co-creation.
This idea that Christmas is both a call to and celebration of co-creation is especially important today in the midst of accelerating climate change. Through our severe ecological challenges, most of which are of our own making, we are beginning to understand our deep estrangement from creation.
Just as the birth of a child changes our domestic landscape, the recalling of the birth of Jesus for the Christian world at this moment prompts reflection on what our proper role is not only on this planet, but, indeed, in the unfolding of the universe itself.
For the Christian, the Incarnation is not a mere dalliance, a transitory blip on the liturgical calendar or an excuse for a paroxysm of gift-giving. Rather it signals a permanent rootedness of the divine in the human family and the life of the Earth.
Just as once we have a child, we are always a parent, so too with the Nativity. For the Christian, once God has been born among us, we are no longer passive passengers on an alienated planet ― henceforth, we are deeply interconnected with the divine, each other, and the rest of God’s creation.
Christmas is thus a story about the human taking up its piece in the cosmic narrative.
Even in a time of human-engendered climate change, the beauty of companionship with the Earth is always open to us.
Christmas encourages us to embrace this companionship and “repeat the sounding joy” throughout our lifetimes.
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