I remember being spooked by a Christmas hymn called Let all mortal flesh keep silence. This hymn spooked me because it was in a minor key, which my mother said made it beautiful. The hymn was utterly depressing to me in the midst of all the Christmas cheer: the church Christmas tree with homemade styrofoam ornaments made by the sunday school youth group; old ladies with their sparkly Christmas corsages; kids with sticky fingers sucking their candy canes to a lethal point; bald babies in velvet Christmas jumpers. Hearing this hymn gave me a sinking feeling. All the glitter of Christmas seemed in vain. From the first verse, this hymn left me with a great sense of fear and doom: Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.
I objected to being called mortal flesh and being told to keep silent. I was sure I was pondering too many earthly minded things.
But the most disturbing part of the hymn came in the last verse:
At his feet the six-winged seraph;
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,
"Alleluia, alleluia!
Alleluia, Lord Most High!"
“Does that mean the cherubims don’t have eyelids?” I recall asking my mother. “That’s right, dear.” she answered, to my horror. The idea of these eyelidless winged creatures endlessly crying out was like a nightmare to me. I could not get this disturbing image out of my mind. I tried to tell myself, “Focus on the baby Jesus. Just focus on the baby. Don’t think about the cherubims.” I still have nightmares about them.
4 comments:
I think we all have images from childhood imbedded in our brains, that disturbed us at the time, and possibly still upset us.
But Aggie - tell your mom I think the reference to sleepless eyes could very well mean they are ever-watchful, and therefore awake all the time. Not lidless.
My upbringing had all sorts of scary religious imagery for me. I remember, as a 6-year-old, a few days before Ash Wednesday, my older brother telling me that part of the ritual was that we would get a cross branded with hot coals on our foreheads. It's no wonder I'm a lapsed Catholic.
Maybe the cherubim have nictitating membranes.
Shorty, that sounds just as creepy as no lids at all. However, I understand that many children have Christmas nightmares -- all the excitement. Or a bad mincemeat OD.
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