Christmastime in Wales brings many traditions that we enjoy and music tops our list, as it does throughout the year. Two musical traditions that we dip in and out of each Christmas include the Welsh hymn tradition and plygain, traditionally a service where songs in three-part harmony are sung in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Here’s a good example of plygain below:
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The day finally came! After hundreds of years of prophecies telling the time, place, and nature of the birth of a Savior, God fulfilled His promise. The God Man was born, not in a palace but in a stable.
Wait. What??
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For December’s Sprachspielen, I’d like to deviate a bit from my normal pattern of the past few months, since starting this editorial series. Up to this time, I’ve tended to address terminology, vocabulary, or concepts, which are central to the missiology, vision, ethos, and practical outworking in missionary activity of Linguæ Christi. It has been my hope that in defining some of these key terms and concepts, it would give you, the reader, an ever clearer understanding of what exactly God has been calling and leading us to do, as our part in His plan for world missions.
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It might go without saying, but this Christmas season has been very different. I’ve always loved Advent. The waiting, the longing, the contemplation, the angst… all things we enneagram 4’s thrive on. Last year, like Mary, I was waiting on our own little baby. The magic of pregnancy helped me see the incarnation in new ways—less “o holy night” and more “oh heartburn nausea.”
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Just last month, I was commenting on how quickly this year is coming to a close. It feels like I blinked my eyes, and all of a sudden we are now in December, well and truly approaching the end of 2020. I’m sure that 2021 will be upon us in a flash at this rate.
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