Thomas Hardy 'The Oxen': Christmas In Our Time

If you have the privilege of attending a performance of Vaughan-Williams' Hodie,
you will be surprised to experience that the piece's central moment occurs several minutes before its conclusion, when the baritone sings the wonderful setting of Thomas Hardy's poem, 'The Oxen'.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen.
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve
“Come; see the oxen kneel

“In the lonely barton by yonder comb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

It is often intoned that we live in an age of skepticism, a 'post-modern' age, an age of disbelief.

OS begs to differ. He thinks we live in an Age of Disappointment. So much technical progress, so little human progress, so many utopian dreams gone so tragically wrong.

We hear the Song of the Angels, see the images of the Holy Family at the creche, hear the promise of outrageous grace offered us in that child, and so many of us head the other direction, away from the manger. We'll not get taken in this time, thank you. It's too good to be true, and we've learned not to play the sucker.

But, the question lingers: What if, hope against hope, it is all true? If God showed up as one of us, then that has to change our view of things.

This is what Thomas Hardy captured so succinctly, and what Vaughan-Williams set to music so sensitively.

And, here we all are, hoping it might be so.

OS's hope this Christmas is that we will all 'go with him in the gloom', run toward the manger instead of away from it. Our hope lies there, and nowhere else.