My Guilty Pleasure Christmas Hymn

In the song "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" what is the referent to "it"? According to the writer of the hymn, that which came upon a midnight clear was a song; a song sung by the angles. So we sing a song about a song.

I am a little bit dismayed over its shallow theology. My first complaint is that it is not really a song about Jesus - it is a song about a future "age of gold." Second, it is wrong when it speaks of angles singing. The word in Luke 2:13-14 is "saying" not "singing." One might draw the conclusion that the angles are singing because of the word "praising" but the words spoken in unison by the angles was more like a liturgical recitation than a hymn. 

The third complaint is its fuzzy liberal theology. The writer, Edmund Sears, who penned a five stanza poem, the title of which escapes me, served as a Unitarian Minister. He writes it in 1849. The Civil War is looming and the conflict with Mexico the annexation of Texas had just been diplomatically resolved. Slavery was an issue in each of these conflicts.

Edmund Sears'  originally published edition includes a third stanza that nearly all hymnals omit. This stanza reminds me of Longfellow's haunting Christmas song, "I Heard the Bells of Christmas Day." "Though sin be strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth, good will to men." Longfellow wrote his hymn (really a poem, later made into a hymn) in midst of the Civil War. Against his father's wishes, his oldest son became an office in the Union Army. It is also follows the untimely death of his wife when their home burns to the ground. Longfellow and Sears, both Unitarians, bring a refreshing realism to the incarnation. It is ironic that these men might not have regarded sin as a thing requiring the atoning act of a sinless Savior but they do understand the depths sin have take on this "weary world."

This hymn comes at a time when Sears was recovering from a bout of depression. He was considered by his Unitarian peers to be an "evangelical" Unitarian because Sears he describes our personal relationship with God is like the personal relationship between the Father and the Son. As he aged his theology became more and more in line with Transcendentalism. He affirmed the ways to God found in all religions and became more and more critical of orthodox Christianity. His politics was always way left of centered. Note a satirical poem he writes during the Mexican / American War. You will remember that this occurs under the Polk administration.

And does he make men shoot and kill? 
  Then let some pious folk, 
A gallows build at Washington, 
  And hang up Mr. Polk!

Here is Sears third stanza to his hymn, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," the one most publishers leave out.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife,
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing. 

While I love his poetry, his gentle heart, his passion for justice and even his realism, Sears and Longfellow miss the Savior who comes to redeem sinners - even those sinners trapped in a world gone mad with war.