The Holly Bears a Berry

One of my favourite Christmas Carols is, “The Holly and The Ivy,” mainly because it is just a lovely tune. Closer inspection reveals amazing lyrics because this isn’t a carol about holly and ivy, it’s about the cost of salvation. At the heart of the matter is this verse:

The holly bears a berry,

As red as any blood,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

For to do us sinners good.

Another versus point out that the holly has a prickle, as sharp as any thorn, just like the thorns that made the crown that was so mockingly placed on the head of Jesus as he was tortured.

Yet another verse says that the bark of the holly is as bitter as gall, like the gall served to Jesus as he hung on the cross, “for to do us sinners good.”

There’s not a word of the nativity story that wasn’t remembered and retold without the full knowledge of the crucifixion. The Christmas story is not about sugarplums and old elves, no matter how jolly.

Everyone telling this nativity knows that not one single point of it is extraordinary and would have been easily forgotten except for the fact that this birth is the incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us. God taking on human form and living amongst us. AND dying for us.

All is not lost, for as the carol says, the holly when it is full grown, it bears the crown. The salvation of Jesus Christ is victorious. Our joy, the thing that brings us peace in Advent and Christmas is that it is the Saviour’s birth we celebrate.