By My Baby Tonight

On this eve of Christ’s birth, I am singing carols that are a little odd.

I am taking some of the words to my favorite soul music and imagining the angels singing backup.  So many of those songs use the word “baby.”  The singer or the songwriter sings to the love of their life, “my baby.”  A lot of Christmas hymns and carols came from popular music sung in taverns or by traveling minstrels.  So I’m thinking about a new carol like
“Be My Baby Tonight.”  The cradle really would be rocking with that rhythm, and the cave would be a popular club—perhaps The Manger Inn or The Cave.  There’s a lot of talk about a silent night.  When you read the Christmas story, however, it’s rocking with rejoicing.

How about the carol, “Love to Love You, Baby”?  Yeah, that would need a lot of rewriting, but, hey, it’s a song about deep, physical love—which is what the birth of Jesus is all about—God Incarnate       .

Here’s another song just aching to become a Christmas hymn:  “Baby, I Need Your Lovin.’” That’s what the shepherds might sing.  After all, they are the kinds of people who most of us never want to meet.  They’re the rough and tough types.  When it comes right down to it, though, each of us needs God’s lovin’—and we have it at all times and in all ways in our lives, if we want to accept what God offers us in Christ.  Even the next verse, “Got to have all your lovin’” –and the Good News, we have all God’s lovin’, in Christ.

These revised songs are like adult versions of children’s nursery songs that became carols—“Away in a Manger” for instance.

Christmas is all about the mystery of God’s love in the newborn Christ.  He shows us what “Baby Love” is all about.

Hey, baby—what hit songs are you singing in a new way tonight?