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Christmas Morning Cantata: Bursting with Gladness!

by Gwen Gotsch

Christians in eighteenth century Germany celebrated the Christmas season by going to church—on Christmas Day, on Second Christmas Day, Third Christmas Day, the Circumcision of Jesus (New Year’s Day), the Sunday after the Circumcision, and on the Feast of the Epiphany. Christmas was a public, community celebration, different from the quiet and cozy home and family celebrations idealized in 21st-century American movies, greeting cards and Christmas season advertising.

Eighteenth-century Germany, of course, was the time of Johann Sebastian Bach. His church cantatas for Christmas Day do not spend much time on intimate portraits of Mary, Joseph and the baby in the manger. Instead they express our great joy at hearing the news that God has given us a Savior. One of those cantatas, “Christen, ätzet diesen Tag” (BWV #63) will be performed at Grace on Christmas morning, December 25, in the 10:00 a.m. worship service. But don’t be afraid that you’re going to hear a dried-out piece of 300-year-old church music!

Bach’s art has been described as both intellectual and sensuous, earthy and metaphysical. This cantata overflows with Bach’s sense of humanity. For example, a duet sung by soprano and bass closely intertwines voices, accompaniment and a solo oboe to show how God cares for us and how we can rely on him. Another duet, for alto and tenor, has voices dancing with Christmas joy. The cantata’s closing chorus opens with a trumpet fanfare that sends the violins and woodwinds scurrying, much like people rushing to get to church on Christmas morning. Solemn, serious, melodic prayers follow, in the form of a fugue, but they soon crescendo into more fanfares and exuberant celebration, Christmas  happiness that cannot be contained in formal prayers nor dampened by the devil.

There will be other music in the service, favorite Christmas hymns, a sermon, and Holy Communion---a public, communal celebration of God’s presence here on earth. Christmas Day is a day to be shared with other Christians!

(Photo of the interior of the St. Nikolai Kirche in Leipzig, Germany. Bach was cantor in Leipzig and responsible for music here as well as at St. Thomas from 1723 until his death in 1750.)

Listen to conductor John Eliot Gardner discuss the cantata here. Preview the final chorus here.