Biblical and Theological Commentary on "Noel"

(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)

As we are in the midst of the Advent season, it is appropriate that my Tolkien-related posts this month will be on his Christmas material (Christmas season proper does not fall when I tend to do “Tolkien Tuesday” posts). The first of these is his 1936 poem “Noel.” It was originally published in the twelfth issue of The ‘Annual’ of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon (pages 4–5). This was a publication of the convent school of the Sisters of Mercy, an order Tolkien became personally familiar with in World War 1 during his hospitalization in 1917 (particularly Mother Mary Michael).

The poem itself is reminiscent in a way of the Old English Exodus putting the story of the exodus in the form of an Old English heroic epic, though that is not to suggest that this poem is a heroic epic. While scholars and students at Oxford knew Tolkien’s name (most prominently for his work on Beowulf), he wrote and published this before he became a household name, as this was one year before The Hobbit and nearly eighteen years before the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring. The title derives from an Old French word for Christmas Noël, which itself derives from the Latin Natalis for the season of the Nativity or Birth of Christ (as in the Christmas Carol “The First Noel”).

It is particularly apt for Tolkien to present the story in such ways as to resonate with fairy-stories and myth because of how he has spoken in one of his great essays about the gospel story:

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels – peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.¹

In the highlighted text, he speaks of the event celebrated at Christmas time as the eucatastrophe of history. Tolkien regarded eucatastrophe as the greatest consolation and highest function of the fairy-story. He defined the notion as,

the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive.’ In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.²

I will not revisit this subject too much here, since I have written on it more extensively elsewhere (as well as in my forthcoming book).

With all that said, here is the actual text of the poem.

Text

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind,
the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven’s towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven's King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.

Audio/Video

Commentary

I am not going to focus on the compositional aspects of the poem too much, since my main interest is elsewhere. But there will still be points of interest to observe as we proceed through the poem. The first point of interest, though, is how Tolkien works with the setting of winter and night. Since Christmas has typically been celebrated on December 25 (on Gregorian and Julian calendars) and nearly always in winter in any tradition, this is unsurprising. It has only been in more recent centuries that it has become more popular to cast doubt on the winter setting for reasons that I do not think are particularly good, as I have gone over in two separate series here and here. By far the most frequent point made against this setting, continuously raised as if no one thought of it until recently, is the fact that the shepherds were in the field at night, which I have shown elsewhere is neither here nor there for determining the time of year of Jesus’s birth.

This tradition fits historically, but Tolkien, like many a Christian author before him, also puts it to effective use imaginatively (for examples, see here and here). Not only is the scene taking place at night, but it is taking place during a season of the most prolonged night when the land is colder and barren. The physical climate thus reflects the spiritual climate into which would come the Light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness. In various ways, Christmas sermons and other teachings about Christmas have thus exemplified larger themes of early Christians correlating events of creation and salvation history. In this case, the opposition is represented by a “lord of snows” who is blanketing the world with his frost and piercing every shield against his chilling winds. As set forth most especially in the version of the Christmas story in Rev 12 (though there are elements of it in all the NT Christmas texts), it is not merely that the world is lacking in warmth and light; it is that enemy forces are actively trying to shut these things out of the world.

The turning point is first announced at the end of the second stanza with the note of the rending of the “veil of cloud.” Although none of the biblical Christmas stories include this particular imagery, it is reminiscent of another scene from the Gospels, particularly Mark’s version. When the Spirit descends on Jesus at his baptism, it is said that the heavens opened (Matt 3:16 // Luke 3:21), and in Mark’s version specifically it says that the heavens were rent or torn open (Mark 1:10). That language is in turn reminiscent of the veil of the temple being torn after Jesus’s death (Matt 27:51 // Mark 15:38 // Luke 23:45). What is interesting about the connection of Jesus’s birth to the scene of Jesus’s baptism is that early Christian tradition, especially in the East, often linked these scenes, sometimes even assigning them the same dates (the earliest evidence of which is found in Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.21; cf. Epiphanius, Pan., 51.22.3–6, 12, 17, 29.7–30.3; Jerome, Hom. 88; John Cassian, Conferences 10.2). This time, though, the veil is not rent for the Holy Spirit; it is rent at the coming of the Christ-child.

And with the coming of this child, the third, middle stanza brings the turning point to full effect with the emergence of the light. I have discussed the star from different perspectives here and here. The voice breaking forth in sudden song is, in the context of the poem, Mary’s. There is no reference to her singing in the Gospel narratives after she gives birth. But her Magnificat in Luke 1:46–55 is still sung to this day in celebration of Christ’s birth and in anticipation of his Second Coming (see here and here). Because the focus is on her in this poem, the angelic declaration of Luke 2:10–12, 14 is not referenced, nor is the praise of the shepherds in Luke 2:20. But the fundamental point remains that from her song in praise of God would resound all others who would join in praise of the God who sent his Son from Heaven to Earth through Mary’s womb. As he came from Heaven to Earth, so her song goes from Earth to Heaven, from the frost-bitten and mist-covered world to the ever-lush Paradise of Heaven. As Luke 1:26–38 informs us, she who was only a mortal maid was chosen (and willingly accepted) to be the mother of the immortal King of Heaven.

The last stanza reverses the condition of the first stanza as while the world was grim and grey “last night,” it is glad and fair “this night.” The stars have returned. The hall is now filled with laughter and light. And the fire is now burning bright. Light and life are now coursing through the world with the coming of the Light of the world. Again we are reminded that the bells of Paradise ring, but now it is said that they ring with bells of Christendom. As in the third and fourth stanzas, so most clearly in the fifth stanza we see the corresponding worship in Heaven and on Earth as glimpsed in Luke 2, as the Church would eventually come forth from the events of this night. And in acknowledgment that God on earth is come, the song is that of the Gloria. This is particularly significant in this context not only because of Luke 2:14, but also because the Gloria returns to the Catholic liturgy with Christmas after its suspension during the season of Advent (as it also returns with Easter after the suspension during the season of Lent). It is also significant because the Gloria is especially illustrative of how earthly worship reflects heavenly worship.

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Monsters and the Critics, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2006), 155–56 (emphasis mine).

2. Ibid., 153 (emphases original).