WA2K Radio is now on the air, Part 3

When Bing Crosby or Robert Goulet or Carrie Underwood sing of “a star, a
star, dancing in the night with a tail as big as a kite,” it evokes the
biblical Star of Bethlehem, leading the magi to the son of God.

It also evokes a nuclear missile.

Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker wrote “Do You Hear What I Hear” in
1962, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in response to the
existential dread they felt because of the Cold War. “In the studio, the
producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated,”
Regney once explained. “En route to my home, I saw two mothers with
their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other and
smiling.” This inspired the first line of the song: “Said the night wind to
the little lamb … ”

With this context, a carol that may feel like a classical standard suddenly
seems much more haunting, urgent, modern. Not that it’s not haunting
on its own. Like many a great Christmas song, it is one of call and
response, and of dramatic shifts in volume and pitch. Each refrain begins
with a question sung solemn and low, and then jumps up the scales for
the answer. This creates a sense of size, of craning upward for revelation.

The lyrics are impressionistic, writerly, about a chain of communications
between objects animate and not; I have always felt a bit frightened at
the notion of “a voice as big as the sea.” The mentions of The Child make
the song Christian, of course. But when there’s the command for “people
everywhere” to pray for peace, the import is beyond any one religion.

Baker once said that because of the fearful mood of the nation at the
time, she and Regney had a hard time singing “Do You Hear What I Hear”
without crying: “Our little song broke us up.” There’s reason enough for
it to have the same effect today, unfortunately.