ok the shittiest part about christmastime is the fact people keep skipping over the forth verse of “we three kings” like… we get it. y’all are white protestants who can’t even think about mortality for one single second.
also people who skip the third verse of “o holy night” are reactionary cowards
ok but these lyrics are so powerful and amazing. im so pissed.
We Three Kings (4):
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume Breathes a life of gathering gloom; Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
O Holy Night (3):
Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, With all our hearts we praise His holy name. Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we, His power and glory ever more proclaim! His power and glory ever more proclaim!
Important context on O Holy Night: The English lyrics by John Sullivan Dwight are from 1855, a full decade before the abolition of slavery in the United States. In fact, abolition was still a VERY fringe position. Pro-slavery advocates, meanwhile, were arguing that slavery was God’s gift to white civilization. In that year, six years before the Civil War began, Americans were already shooting each other over whether slavery should expand out in Kansas.
Dwight–unsurprisingly, a Unitarian minister–put the most inflammatory possible political statement of the day into his Christmas carol.
No wonder I never knew there even was a third verse of O Holy Night. The conservatives would shit themselves if they had to hear it, let alone sing it.