O Little Town of Bethlehem

Lyrics

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wond'ring love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is giv'n!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heav'n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

History

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), an American Episcopal clergyman who was then rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, wrote the words in 1868. Three years earlier, on Christmas Eve 1865, he had travelled to Bethlehem during a tour of the Holy Land and attended a service at the Church of the Nativity, riding out afterwards through the quiet countryside outside the town. The memory stayed with him, and in December 1868 he put it into verse for the children of his Sunday school, asking his church organist, Lewis Henry Redner (1831-1908), to compose a tune in time for the Christmas service on 27 December that year.

Redner's own account of writing the tune is one of the best-known anecdotes in American hymnody: with the deadline pressing and no melody settled, he later said he woke in the night with the tune already in his head, jotted down the treble line, and completed the harmony the next morning before the children rehearsed it. The result was named ST LOUIS, after Redner's home city, and was first published alongside Brooks's text in 1874; it remains the tune sung throughout the United States and Canada.

In Britain, Ireland and much of the Commonwealth, the carol is instead generally sung to FOREST GREEN, an English folk melody that Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) collected in December 1903 from a singer in Forest Green, Surrey, and later arranged for this text in The English Hymnal (1906). Brooks's words are usually printed in four stanzas; hymnals typically omit an additional stanza that was part of the original 1868 performance. As Brooks died in 1893, his text has long been in the public domain on both sides of the Atlantic.

Performance

This recording of 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' runs 3 minutes 39 seconds and was published to the channel in 2023 under the title 'O Little Town of Bethlehem - Traditional Christmas Hymn | Phillips Brooks'. The title credits Brooks as the author of the words but names no performer, so none is attributed here.

Sources: hymnary.org · hymnologyarchive.com · en.wikipedia.org · hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com · worship.lifeway.com