Songwriter Sarah Hart’s Christmas Imagination
Each year at this time pop stars, crooners, and Broadway sensations release new albums of holiday music, hoping to capitalize on our love of the season to be the next Mariah Carey, aka Mama Christmas. It’s interesting to watch them each venture into what are highly competitive waters. More often than not a singer or band’s pedigree ends up falling to the wayside in favor of some ineffable quality that bestows the status of classic on some songs or interpretations of old favorites, while others from equally talented artists shuffle off, never to be heard of again.
And the same is true in liturgical circles. Think of a Catholic or Christian composer, and you can be sure that in their repertoire are at least a handful of Advent and Christmas songs. But out of what is a huge catalog of religious or liturgical material, only relatively few find their way into liturgies or Christian radio. Why is that? Why do some Advent and Christmas songs succeed and others fail? What are the secret ingredients?
I recently put this question to Catholic songwriter Sarah Hart. A few weeks ago, Hart released her own album of Advent and Christmas songs, All The Earth Alive Rejoicing. And it’s a fascinating album, filled with fresh, original takes on familiar holiday stories and experiences. “By Your Side” takes the story of Mary and Joseph and imagines it as a love song, sung by Hart and Josh Blakesley. “God So Loved the World” draws on a line from the Gospel of John that is most often associated with Lent and Holy Week and reclaims it as a jumping off point to think about the Christ Child. And in maybe my favorite of the bunch, Hart considers all the things we do in this season—setting up a tree, wrapping gifts, making food, going to Church—and recasts them all as spiritual, sacramental actions, parts of the “Season of the Son.”
In developing her Advent/Christmas album, Hart began by considering the Holy Family. “I’m always drawn to the story of the Holy Family, what they went through and how they must’ve felt,” she wrote to me by email. “I love that Christ was born not as a king in the way the world thinks, but in a way that we in our humanness are surprised by; humbly, quietly, into a family with few resources and little voice.”
Hart’s instincts as a songwriter tend to explore that which is hidden or goes unsaid. “I like to address things that are in the liminal spaces, the things we don’t talk about, the things we don’t always see,” she explained. “I call it using ‘holy imagination.’” And so, in thinking through “All the Earth Alive Rejoicing,” she considered where there might be gaps, the stories that haven’t been told yet, like the conversation between Joseph and Mary after the angel Gabriel’s visitation, or the holiday rituals of our own holy families. “Those are very important concepts to me,” she wrote. “I think it’s important for writers to look for the things that have not been spoken. I’m always questioning the in-between.”
Hart said when it comes to Advent and Christmas she’s also “drawn to the concept of darkness and light, and how the literal light of the world comes and falls into every metaphoric dark space that we experience in life.” And one of the most striking elements of her album is how often her songs find ways to bring the birth of Christ into conversation with the burdens that people often feel during this season. So in the anthemic “As You Are,” one of a number of songs which subtly play upon the Advent song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” she addresses directly those in need—the wounded, the afflicted, the jaded, the stumbling and fallen, and says to each of them, “O come as you are.”
“I don’t know any single person on the face of this planet who hasn’t felt burdened or lost at some point in their lives,” she explained. “Christmas can often be a very heavy time for people, especially those who have lost someone during the year. As joyful as the season can be, it can also sting.” She sees her songs as “painting little musical pictures that encourage others to feel the love of a God who becomes flesh in order to accompany us in our very human struggles.”
I wondered why “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” figures so prominently on the album. “You know what it always is about that song for me?,” she asked. “The words ‘ransom captive.’ It’s that concept of literally asking God to save us from our captivity.” We’ve got all something that holds us back and weighs us down, she noted. “And into the little cells of our own making comes the Christ child to free us from our proverbial prisons.”
“It’s really an astounding concept,” she said. “Those words just cut through to my soul every single time.”
So what are the ingredients of a good Christmas song?, I asked Hart. “Comfort and joy!” she responded. “I think the song should lyrically and musically reflect the joy we feel in the season, accompanying the comfort that is brought to us by a God who is incarnate.”
“Gloria, oh gloria,” Hart sings at the end of the album, “The light of the world has come.” And the comfort that the birth of Jesus offers she makes clear: “We do not walk alone.”
