Augustine of Hippo on the Miseries of Winter
… plus, the only Christmas music playlist you’ll ever need, as long as you like your holiday meals with a side of heavy metal
Christmas songs are now playing in the coffee shops, as if the impending cold is something about which we should revel and rejoice instead of curling into fetal positions and screaming for spring, which is what I do every year and plan to do this year as well.
Despite my best efforts, winter is on the way.
I despise practically everything about winter.
I grade weather the same way I grade papers, on the Fahrenheit scale. When it’s above 90, it’s a solid B or maybe even an A, and all is well. Below 60, and it’s a failure. Below 40 degrees, and it’s clear that someone isn’t even trying to get it right.
“So Very Susceptible to Being Too Cold”
Unfortunately, the publishers of calendars insist on continuing to schedule Christmas on December 25, which means that—for those of us who live on the north half of the planet—Christmas always takes place in the winter. As a result, my feelings about Christmas are always somewhat ambivalent. I want to like Christmas, but Christmas always seems to be accompanied by days that are colder and shorter and darker and sadder than summer.
But I am in good company when it comes to my spite for winter.
Augustine of Hippo, the greatest theologian in the history of the church, hated winter too.
The older he got, the more he commiserated about winter. In the winter of 411, for example, he wrote these words in a letter to his friends Albina, Pinianus, and Melania,
I am, whether due to present infirmity or just by my natural temperament, so very susceptible to being too cold…. Maybe you think this awful winter weather is the only reason I’ve suffered the disappointment of not visiting you—but winter isn’t the only reason. (Epistula 124)
What Augustine Said that I Need to Hear and Remember
But Augustine also struggled to see God’s redeeming work in the winter as well.
The same winter that he complained about the winter to his friends, Augustine preached a sermon in which he suggested that God created the seasons themselves with death and resurrection already in mind. In other words, winter exists because God already had the death of Jesus in mind at creation, and spring exists because God had already planned the resurrection of the dead when he made the world.
According to Augustine,
The whole of creation speaks of resurrection. … Everything is cut off from autumn to winter, but it comes back again through spring into the summer. (Sermo 361)
“The whole creation speaks of resurrection,” Augustine reminds us, and life always “comes back again.”
He saw the dark misery of winter as a reminder that, in our lives no less than in the seasons, there is a greater warmth and light yet to come.
But Winter Is Still Miserable
These are beautiful sentiments in the spring, when the new-budded dogwood tree reminds me that Jesus is risen.
They do not feel nearly as beautiful to me in the darkened womb and death-cold tomb of winter.
Nevertheless, I do try to enjoy Christmas, mostly for the sake of my wife and children.
And so, I look for holiday music that I can enjoy—which is difficult at times, since so many of these songs exult in abominable atrocities like snowmen, snowstorms, sleighs, and a vast assortment of sappy sentimentalities that somehow intersect with the cold.
(Did I happen to mention how much I really despise winter?)
Still, I have managed to find a handful of Christmas songs that I’m able not merely to stomach but to tolerate with a limited measure of happiness even after repeated listenings. This music—which is solely based on my own incorrigible, indubitable, infallible, and completely subjective taste—is the only Christmas playlist you will ever need. Along with these Christmas songs, I’ve mingled a few other songs in my personal playlist that point to redemption and resurrection as well.
To access my playlist—which I’ve entitled “Christmas Rocks”—click here:
… or, simply scroll down to see the entire playlist below.
The Playlist
Entroit
Jimi Hendrix, “Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, Auld Lang Syne”
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve”
Despair
Rich Mullins, “Hard to Get”
U2, “If God Will Send His Angels” and “Peace on Earth”
Nicole Mullen, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
Hope
Gary Hoey, “Carol of the Bells”
Whiteheart, “Little Drummer Boy”
Dropkick Murphys, “Amazing Grace“
Bad Religion, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “What Child Is This?” “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
Redemption
One Bad Pig, “When Your Love Died”
Hidden Citizens, “Ain’t No Grave”
Stryper, “Reason for the Season”
Already and Not Yet
Our Last Night, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”
Pearl Jam, “Someday at Christmas”
The Smashing Pumpkins, “Christmastime”
Shinedown, “Happy X-Mas”
The Ramones, “Merry Christmas”
Sabaton, “Christmas Truce”
Melancholy and Joy
Gary Hoey, “Joy to the World”
August Burns Red, “Home Alone Theme”
Wham!, “Last Christmas”
Point North, “All I Want for Christmas Is You”
U2, “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)”
Black Label Society, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Wonderful World”
116, “Joy”
Diamanté, “Auld Lang Syne”
Nicole Mullen, “365”
Move to Australia and celebrate Christmas on the beach!!
“Last Christmas”? Really? I want my money back. 😂