The Poet and Her Poem
When Christina Rossetti submitted her “Christmas Carol” for publication in the January 1872 edition of Scribner’s Monthly (an American periodical), she could never have known the fame that would follow the carol in decades to come. Her own brother, William Michael, thought that the ten-pound stub she received for the poem was “liberal” (Bornand 122). That is not to say Rossetti was an obscure or unsuccessful poet in her time; in fact, by the 1870s she had become one of the most highly esteemed female poets of the Victorian era and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She was best known for her long poem “Goblin Market,” and was also a prolific writer of devotional, romantic, and children’s poems. But “In the bleak mid-winter” was not one of her more well-known works, and she didn’t publish it elsewhere. In Scribner’s Monthly, the poem was published alongside Dickensian poems and short stories by relatively unknown writers that revolved around themes of redemption and forgiveness. The editor of Scribner’s Monthly, Josiah Gilbert Holland, upheld strong convictions about the purpose of culture, believing that art and literature should point to the sacred and that “art for art’s sake” is a “selfish pursuit.” In its first public appearance, “In the bleak midwinter” made a humble contribution to Scribner’s goal of bringing faith to art.
Rossetti’s carol places the birth of the Christ child in the context of a wintry Victorian Christmas, assisting an English reader in entering into the nativity story. The first lines convey a cold, bitter environment:
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone.
This is clearly not a realistic image of ancient Bethlehem–instead, it reflects the conditions that would be familiar to an English reader at Christmastime. Then, in the first line of the second stanza, the speaker turns to supernatural, theological concerns:
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign
These lines make reference to scripture, drawing on the apocalyptic writing of Revelation. But the speaker quickly brings these theological ideas back to earth, continuing:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.
The ultimate message of the poem is a paradox: only the humblest dwelling will suffice for the Almighty. The following two stanzas catalogue the different creatures that worship Christ in the stable. There are angels, archangels, cherubim, and seraphim, but also animals, and, most intimately, Christ’s mother “In her maiden bliss / Worshipped the Beloved with a kiss.” In the final stanza, the tone changes as the speaker turns inward, asking “What can I give Him, / Poor as I am?” The speaker invites a reader to ponder this question as well. While a shepherd would bring a lamb, and a wise man would do his part, what is there for the poor, humble speaker to give? “Yet what I can I give Him,/Give my heart.” The final message is a completion of the paradox introduced earlier in the poem: Christ the King comes not for majesty or power, but for our hearts.
Even though Rossetti herself called it a “Christmas Carol,” the poem was not set to music until after her death. This digital archive contains over eighty original musical settings of this poem, and over a hundred arrangements of Gustav Holst and Harold Darke’s classic settings. Most of these compositions originate from the UK and the US, but many were written elsewhere such as Germany, Canada, Japan, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The poem has been translated into French, German, Swedish, and possibly other languages as well. The poem’s irregular metre has also prompted composers to take a variety of approaches in setting it to music. While the wide variety of original settings of this carol pose fascinating opportunities for research, at the heart of this carol’s legacy are the settings by Holst and Darke that have become so firmly ingrained in British popular culture.
Sources:
Holland, Josiah Gilbert. "The Faults of Culture." Scribner's Monthly, Scribner & Company, vol. 3, no. 3, Jan. 1872, p. 370.
Rossetti, Christina. "A Christmas Carol." Scribner's Monthly, Scribner & Company, vol. 3, no. 3, Jan. 1872, p. 278.
Rossetti, William Michael. The Diary of W. M. Rossetti 1870-1873. Edited by Odette Bornand, Clarendon Press, 1977.