Bono and Edge played the Mencap Little Noise Sessions at London's Union Chapel. In a stripped down twenty minute performance, with Adam watching from the balcony, they played Stay, Desire, Angel of Harlem and Wave of Sorrow. Most songs are on YouTube, filmed on phones of alert members of the small (200) audience. Wow, what a treat to see the band in such an intimate setting. Okay, not the band, you say. But even still, Bono and Edge in such a setting. Lovely, amazing.
It caught my eye reading one report that Bono had introduced Angel of Harlem as "our only Christmas song." Well, I'd never thought of it that way, but sure enough, the song does begin:
It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground at J.F.K.
The snow was melting on the ground
On B.L.S. I heard the sound
(Of an angel).
New York like a Christmas tree
Tonight, this city belongs to me,
(Angel).
You can watch the video, if you'd like. It's here.
Any U2 fan knows the participated in a charity single called, Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) but it is not their song. And besides, its terrible.
Personally, I've thought since I first heard it that their signature Christmas song was Peace on Earth. It is a song from the band's 2000 release, All That You Can't Leave Behind. I've come to see Advent as a season of lament. Lament along the lines of what Matthew reports Jesus saying (23:37) "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." Christmas time is not all that nice from a scriptural perspective, despite the thick layers of sweet frosting we've managed to spread over it. My friend Pam has written about the edge, the judgment, the reckoning that is at the heart of this season. John the baptist appearing in the wilderness, quoting prophets about bringing down the lofty and raising up the low. Calling for repentance and readiness for a new moment to be born. Indeed. The profound hope is there, and yet hope is not equal to nice. Jesus was born but we know what he must suffer. And to his followers, beginning with the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, whose feast day is December 26. And just two days later on December 28 we remember the Herod's slaughter of the innocents in a desperate act to kill the one 'heralded by angels'.
Not that I don't enjoy a lovely and intimate candlelight version of Silent Night on Christmas Eve, or even a rowdy version of Sleigh Ride (such as the Relient K version I'm listening to just now). It is just that for the Advent - Christmas - Epiphany season to make any sense at all, it has to have lament, too. U2 have this genre in the bag, and one of their most powerful songs is, I would argue, this Christmas lament: Peace on Earth. I don't know when exactly Bono wrote the lyric, but it was in response (out of despondence) after an ugly bombing in Omagh on 15th August 1998, just a few months after the Good Friday agreement that was meant to bring peace to Northern Ireland. It is the first time that the band quote from Friedrich Nietzsche's aphorism (Bono loves aphorisms--I hope he writes a book with all the aphorisms he's collected!) "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." (from Beyond Good And Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Part Four: Epigrams and Interludes, #146). During the Vertigo Tour in 2005-2006, this aphorism was turned into a prayer in relation to the new 'wars of religion' between the sons and daughters of Abraham. Powerful.
Anyway, the lyric ends with this (see the whole lyric here):
Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth
To tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
Jesus sing a song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth
Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth
This peace on Earth
Anon,
Chris
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