Do You Hear What I Hear

By Noel Regney

A growing story about a shivering child

This is widely used as a Chrismas song and is hard to separate from that. Neveryheless…

In five thousand years, we may see a world in which a single shivering child is an emergency sufficient to attract a king’s attention. Not because the child is Jesus, but because he is a child and is cold.

The escalation from wind to lamb to shepard to king fits with the idea of truth as greater than hierarchy. And the final reference to bringing light has obvious relevance here (and can become a transition into a reprise).

As for the separation, here’s the text from 2015:

The year is 2013. My name is Raymond Arnold, and I’m listening to the song Do You Hear What I Hear. I’m reading about a week in human history – where one man on a submarine stopped a nuclear war. Where another man in manhattan wrote a desperate plea for peace, that people promptly misinterpreted and ignored.

And I’m noticing, that the song was about the birth of a story.

The story is born, like all of us, small, and powerless. Whispered by the night wind to the humblest of creatures. But each person it touches, it helps to become stronger, and wiser. And they in turn help the story to evolve – to become more useful, and more powerful.

The story gives a shepherd boy the courage to walk before a king and demand his attention. It gives the king the humility to listen, and to learn.

And then, having reached the ear of the king, the story changes the world.

And it occurs to me, that the lyrics to this song are, in fact, incredibly open ended. From its birth, this song has been steeped in metaphor, and evolving interpretation.

So I would like us to sing this song together, in honor of those two children, on that cold october night, who woke up the next day. Who lived to grow old. Who, one way or another, brought a little more light to the world.

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