Each year I seem to have a moment when I discover (or rediscover) the words of a lesser known verse of an old Christmas carol. It’s no wonder—there are many verses we don’t sing of even the most beloved Christmas carols. (Realistically, who is going to take the time to sing all nine verses of “The First Noel”?) Some of these less popular verses, though, I find to be my favorites. This year, it was verses three and four of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace their King,
And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.

And here, in these two verses, is encapsulated both the trial and hope of life. Christmas is more than “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night,” and even within our carols we find the reality of pain and suffering.

In December 1914, young men hunkered down in the muddy trenches of the Western Front. Back in July, when the conflict had started, people said the war would be over by Christmas, but now five months into it, the reality of a long and bloody war was setting in.

Far from home, damp from the autumn rains, and surrounded by ever rising mud, to the men in the trenches, Christmas probably seemed a foreign comfort. Within sight of No Man’s Land, still dotted with the dead and dying, Christmas trees were brought to the German lines, decorated and lit. Care packages of cigarettes, puddings, and sweets were delivered to the soldiers.

What happened next is the stuff of legend and sappy holiday movies. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, a truce spread spontaneously through the Western Front.

It was by no means uniform. Accounts vary and historians debate the details. In some areas, Germans shouted or held up signs saying “WE NO SHOOT, YOU NO SHOOT.” In others, a few brave individuals ventured out of the trenches with arms waving wildly to show they were unarmed. Some recall carols sung together by the two sides, deep voices rising from the trenches singing a song they both knew in their own language: Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.

Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright.

I’m sure by now most of you have started your Christmas shopping. I always enjoy thoughtfully considering the best gift for each member of our families. Once they’re carefully wrapped and placed under the tree, I get excited (and sometimes a bit nervous) for them to be opened, to see the delight, to share a story of where I found it or why I thought it was perfect. Yes, I’m one of those people.

The iconic Christmas gift giver in our culture is Santa Claus. Children expectantly wait to see what he might bring them, and even adults still get wrapped up in the magic of Santa. But Santa Claus has not always been a cultural icon or connected to the materialism and consumerism of Christmas. Behind the rosy cheeked, scarlet clad figure we now know as Santa Claus was a real man—St. Nicholas. Today, December 6, is his feast day.

St. Nicholas was a 3rd-century bishop of Myra (in modern-day Turkey) and became one of the most popular saints in both Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. What we don’t often hear about Nicholas was his role in the church fighting heresy. His teaching kept at bay the heresy of Arianism, which denied that Jesus was fully God. Some legends even say that during the Council of Nicea, which was debating the heresy Arianism, Nicholas was so outraged at the blasphemy of Arius that he slapped him in the face! Certainly a different picture of St. Nicholas than we get at Christmas.

“Gather ‘round ye children, come, listen to the old, old story of the power of death undone by an infant born of glory…”

I could not go through Advent without introducing you to the album that will be played the most frequently in our house this season. This would be Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, which is the most moving Christmas album I know of. A storyteller through and through, Andrew Peterson begins with Moses and the Exodus and continues through the sacrificial system, the kings, the prophets and the exile, and Roman occupation before finally arriving at the more traditional telling of the Christmas story. At this point, the album is already at its halfway mark. It is one that deserves a thoughtful listen from start to finish, as it takes you on the journey of a story.

Some may find songs about the Old Testament to be strange in a Christmas album—aren’t we talking about the New Testament, here?—but I find it is the key to its power. It does not let us escape the reality that Jesus came into a long history between Israel and their God. He came in a particular time and place, in a particular cultural and social situation, and in a particular line and history. We can’t fully comprehend or understand what we read in the traditional New Testament Christmas story if we overlook or forget all that had occurred over the millennia before. Jesus was not born into a vacuum. He was the answer to years of longing and questions, years of prophecy and foreshadowing. Peterson knows this, and he doesn’t let us get to Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem and her no-vacancy inn, or the angel-heralded shepherds until we’ve traced the whole story. I would venture to say it’s the only Christmas album in which you’ll hear a song recording the genealogy from Matthew 1—because the story matters, the history matters, and so we listen to it.