By: Nina Bueno
What’s your favorite Christmas song or hymn? I really love “O Holy Night,” especially when a choir is singing it with all the different harmonies. It’s just so beautiful and fills me with awe. Some other Christmas songs I enjoy are, “Mary Did You Know?” “Silent Night,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Now Is Born the Divine Christ Child” and many others! Perhaps your favorite is on that list, as well.
However, one song that appears in the Christmas section of our Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal but doesn’t really get listed as a favorite is “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” In fact, I’ve even heard people say that they never saw it as a Christmas song at all, despite its references to Jesus being born, the manger, the shepherds and angels, etc. So, I want to examine the lyrics of this song and see if it can tell us something more about the true spirit of Christmas.
The song starts out with a rousing refrain, which we all probably know by memory:
Go tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere:
Go, tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
Next are three stanzas, with the refrain repeated after each one:
While shepherds kept their watching
O’er silent flocks by night,
Behold thru-out the heavens
There shone a holy light.
The shepherds feared and trembled
When lo! above the earth
Rang out the angel chorus
That hailed our Savior’s birth.
Down in a lowly manger
The humble Christ was born,
And God sent us salvation
That blessed Christmas morn.
When I look at these lyrics, I certainly see many references to the Christmas story…. I mean, the last part of the third stanza literally mentions Christmas morning. It’s a very well-known song, and since the references aren’t hidden, I’ve been wondering, why is this song not always seen as a Christmas song?
Well, one idea that comes to my mind is that it’s not necessarily focused on honoring and glorifying Jesus’s birth. Nothing is wrong with hymns like that, of course, because we should honor and glorify our Savior. But not many Christmas hymns focus on our response to His coming.
The well-known refrain, which is repeated throughout the hymn, charges us to “Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born!” It charges us to follow the shepherds’ example of going and spreading the word of Christ’s birth. In Luke chapter 2, the shepherds were quietly spending an evening in the fields, tending their flocks with the starlit sky shining down upon them. And then, suddenly, a light much brighter than any star above shone around them, and angels appeared, announcing the good news and singing glory to God!
Awakened out of their quiet life, the shepherds were entrusted with a special message, and they did not hesitate to see if it was true. They went immediately into Bethlehem and found everything exactly as the angels had said it would be. They laid their eyes upon the Savior of the world and realized that this was not something they could keep to themselves.
“When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. … The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told,” (Luke 2:17-20, New International Version).
Perhaps you, like me, have been living as the shepherds did. By this I mean living quietly, going about your normal routine, marveling at the beauties of life and nature and sometimes even being in awe of the wonders God is working around you. We’re not blind to the amazing things God is doing in our lives and in the lives of others. We have seen our Savior and have heard what has been said concerning Him. But what is our response?
According to this Christmas hymn and to the example of the shepherds in Luke 2, our response should be to go and tell others. We have seen the Savior, now we need to share the good news with others. The shepherds were knocked out of their complacency and entrusted with a mission and a message. And we, too, have been entrusted with a mission and a message.
In Matthew 28:19, Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” We are to go and tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born and that He is coming back again to bring His people to Himself. The birth of Jesus is not the end of the story. He lived and died and was resurrected so that every single person born on Earth could share in eternal life and salvation with Him.
So, this Christmas season, I charge you to take this mission and message to heart. Don’t keep sitting on the hillside living quietly. Go everywhere and proclaim what God has done in your life this semester. Proclaim what Jesus did in coming to this Earth as a little baby: bringing salvation to all. Proclaim the good news of Christmas.
