Veni, Veni, Emmanuel

Christmas Carols Explained, #5

Given its Latin origins, it’s no surprise that the carol known in English as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is one of the earlier pieces from Western Christian tradition—but that’s just the lyrics. Some sources I looked into say that the building blocks of this song date back to the 8th Century.

The Latin text as we have it is from Germany in the 1700s. The music comes from France in the 1400s. The chant itself consists of “antiphons,” or the spoken portion of liturgical worship where the worshippers call out for something and await a response. In this case, they’re literally calling out to Christ, and waiting for Him to answer.

In the Christian tradition we emphasize the virtues of faith, hope, and charity; often we fail to distinguish between faith and hope, thinking that they mean the same thing about believing what you can’t see. Hope, however, has a different component to it: patience. Both principles are connected to belief, but faith is action and hope is attitude. Practicing Christians are actively waiting for Christ’s return, and trying to do His work in the meantime.

My cursory research on this subject gives me the impression that antiphons are mainly a Catholic practice, but I could be wrong about that. A lot of my family members are Catholic, each to a different degree, but I haven’t been to a Catholic service since my grandpa’s funeral in 2015. So I’m no authority there. Nevertheless, I appreciate the message of the song and the intensity of its delivery.

It works really well as an epic instrumental carol, as you can see by my preferred arrangement from Geoff Zanelli.