The Twelve Words of Christmas

No, not “The Twelve Days of Christmas” although that’s a fun song to sing. Most of this blog post comes from a summary of a talk by Louie Giglio, a fantastic Bible teacher whom I’ve just discovered, thanks to my friend, Stephanie.

Louie mentions that his family, as many do, loved to sing Christmas songs among which was “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The custom was to assign each family member a day in the song. The high point of hilarity was assigning the most tone-deaf member of the family the “first day” as he would be the verse-ender for each stanza and consequently, bring everyone to tears as they held their sides in rib-splitting laughter.

Regardless of how much joy we derive from singing Christmas songs, no one would argue that they bring lasting joy, nor do they bring eternal salvation.

That was left to the One of whom the angels sang to those frightened shepherds on that Bethlehem hillside 2,000 plus years ago.

This unique message in song from God’s messengers was even more of a stellar event because He had been silent for 400 years—from the time when the prophet Malachi penned his last words until that moment when the Baby broke that silence with his first cry.

Christmas Eve 1906 brought forth another unique happening. Reginald Fessenden had worked in Edison’s lab experimenting with sound transmission. That Christmas Eve he decided to go to the lab and see if he could transmit his voice to ships equipped with receivers sailing the Atlantic. He was successful in doing so, reading the Christmas story from Luke 2. Fessenden was a classically trained musician and had brought his violin along with him to the lab. He picked it up and began to play “O Holy Night.”

It gives me goose bumps to imagine how those ship captains must have felt when they heard, seemingly out of nowhere, the words of the Christmas story and then a beautiful Christmas carol. It had to have been the most momentous Christmas Eve of their lives.

Back to the twelve words of Christmas. They are, “A Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.”  That trumps "The Twelve Days of Christmas" beyond measure.