dichroic | This is the burden, this is the promise

Most years I post the lyrics of Peter Yarrow’s Chanukah song “Light One Candle”. Thinking about why that song hits me so hard, I think it’s because it’s about having the courage to fight, and also recognizing when not to – where the boundary is between righteous anger, which breeds justice, and hate, which breeds more hate. So this year I’m being ecumenical: here’s Light One Candle, together with two Christmas songs about the same thing, and here are the videos, because the music supports the lyrics.

Peter Yarrow’s Light One Candle:This song embodies the concept of healing the world (tikkun olam), one of the main reason I identify as Jewish theologically as well as ethnically and ritually. I also like the video with this one, with the one child acting as shammes to light the candles for the others.

John McCutcheon’s Christmas in the Trenches – a true story, and the intro talks about the guys who were there.

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I do love the intrumental cameos of “The Minstrel Boy has Gone to War” in there.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day – unlike the stories above, I don’t have a video of this one sung by its creator, because Longfellow has been dead for a while. He wrote this song after learning that his son had died in the Civil War. I do have the guy who wrote the music though – I like John Gorka’s setting much better than the tune I’ve heard from others.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.