I include this Christmas Carol with a heavy heart, for the slaughter of the innocents continues today; it is so entrenched in everyday life we aren’t aware of the reach of its insidious tentacles. Even a quick search of how deeply infiltrated our lives are with this horror causes me to want to run away to an uninhabited place and live totally off the land. At Christmas, sad talk is shunned, but turning away doesn’t make the problem disappear. What to do? I’m completely baffled. I can only leave it on God’s altar and ask him to show me the way.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. ~Psalm 139:13-16

Coventry Carol – Unknown (16th Century)

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay?”

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”