listen to what I say!

It’s that time of year — that time when the music pipes into far more than the elevators. The following song is actually, incredibly fascinating…

One of my guiding principles is never to let life become rote. I don’t want the daily rhythms of life to become so mechanical or habitual that I miss the meaning and joy that accompany those rhythms. Such is true in the above classic, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” While the carol is beloved because of its sweet, musical articulation of what the angels told the shepherds and how the shepherds may have reacted on Christmas night, I was moved even more when I learned the song’s origin…

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” was written in 1962 by Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker.

But it wasn’t written so that we’d eventually have one more song in our Christmas collection for all the celebrities to remake and sing. In fact, Regney had resisted writing a Christmas song, as he was not attracted to the plethora of commercialism that has accompanied a season that means far, incredibly more.

They wrote the song in October, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This historical event — in which the Soviet Union had installed missiles only 90 miles away from the U.S. mainland — is considered the closest the Cold War ever came to escalating into nuclear war.

Regney had experienced war firsthand; he fought in World War II. He knew the danger. The death. The heartache and fear. This song, therefore, was a prayer and a dire plea for peace.

There’s a reason, no less, we’ve heard this song sung by Bing Crosby, Carrie Underwood, and Whitney Houston. There’s a reason Bob Dylan, Alicia Keys, and Johnny Cash have recorded it, as well. That doesn’t even count Mannheim Steamroller, Pentatonix, and the countless others.

This song has deep meaning; there’s nothing rote about it.

There’s a reason to be singing it now.

Respectfully…

AR