In The Bleak Midwinter

"In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago."

There was a poll taken over Christmas - I forget a poll of whom...Radio 2 listeners maybe? - asking people to name their favourite Christmas song, and I - along with most people I spoke to about it - expressed no small amount of incredulity at what we considered to be a surprising and undeserving Number One: Christina Rossetti's 'In The Bleak Midwinter.' Indeed, my actual response was almost certainly something like:

" 'In The Bleak Midwinter?' What the hell kind of wrongheaded kill-joy pretentiousness pushed that to Number One? Hey guys - ever heard of Slade?"

But I absolutely retract this opinion now, based on the fact that I never really gave the song itself much thought when forming this 'opinion', aside from sort of half-remembering it as old, probably a bit dull and slow, and not as good as "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey. I have since fallen totally in love with it.

While taking a 'Blowing The Cobwebs Away' Walk in the North Yorkshire countryside after Christmas, strolling through as frosty a scene as I have ever encountered, I found the lyrics of 'In The Bleak Midwinter' turning around in my head, and within a few minutes and a few false-starts as we tried to get the words right, me and my girlfriend were singing it together as we jumped stiles and streams, the icy imagery perfectly describing the stunning crystallised landscape.

Rossetti's words in this first verse now stand as some of my favourite lyrics to any song. I've always enjoyed simple, stock images in lyrics...I like clarity, brevity in lyrics, ideas expressed with economy, have always liked blues and gospel lyrics filled with religious iconography. What I love about Rossetti's lyric here is that the solidness, the firmness of the images perfectly reflects the subject matter, this frozen, still landscape.

"Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone"

Earth like iron, water like stone. I love that. Not a syllable wasted. Everything that is to be expressed has been, and in the most elegantly simple manner. It's perfect.

I love equally the lines that follow:

"Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow"

So...you're describing snow, right? Lots of snow. It has snowed, then it has snowed again, and again, and now there are many layers of snow, each the same as the last. So how do you describe this? Some florid icing-cake metaphor? Something about the earth being draped in a blanket? Forget it. Rossetti goes for pure stark minimalism, repeating the word snow five times, mimicking the snow and the minimalist appearance of the landscape itself, the words piling up on top of one another on the page. It is hypnotic, it is precise, and it is a wonderful marriage of structure and image. What else needs to be said?

Allied with Gustav Holst's arrangement, 'In The Bleak Midwinter' is a spectacular piece of work, and without doubt the very finest of Christmas carols. I hope to sing it on many winter walks to come.