When we sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve at home, I always insist that we sing all the verses of Good King Wenceslas. To recap, the carol is about the good king who sees a poor man gathering wood for fuel on a cruelly cold winter’s night, walking through deep, crisp and even snow. Those of us in Minnesota (and other hinterlands) know well what a cruelly cold winter’s night feels like.
So the king asks his page about the man – who is he, where does he live – and then concocts a plan for the two of them to go deliver some meat and wine to the poor fellow, as well as pine logs for his fire. The peasant lives a good league away, which is about three miles, so this is no easy jaunt. The night gets darker, the weather is bitter, and the wind gets stronger. There’s no mention of wind chill, but I feel it when we get to that verse – I feel it.
The young page begins to falter under these brutal conditions. He wants to finish the mission – there’s no doubt that he wants to stay with the king – but his heart is failing him. “I can go no longer,” he concludes, probably with some amount of shame and despair.
The good monarch neither condemns nor criticizes the page, but neither does he let him lie down and just rest for a bit. He encourages him. He gives him true courage to continue by telling the young man to walk behind him in his footsteps. “Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.” And it works! As the page treads in his master’s footsteps, there is heat where the king has walked. He is warmed and renewed for the journey ahead.
The conclusion of the story is:
“Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth and rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.“
A nice moral to be sure, that when we seek to bless the poor, we will ourselves find blessing. But I’ve always derived greater comfort and meaning in the idea that Christ will never lead us where He hasn’t already walked. He leaves footprints behind which we can follow and as we walk in them we will be given all that we need to keep going, no matter what sort of “rude wind’s wild lament” may be dragging us down.
Several times in the last week or so, we’ve been out walking in cold weather, trudging through the snow. I have sometimes positioned myself behind my husband, walking in his footsteps, and the song has percolated up into my brain almost subconsciously. “Mark my footsteps my good page, tread thou in them boldly…Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze Thy blood less coldly.”
And my heart is encouraged.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless someone comes to the door with meat, wine and pine logs. It might even be the King!
Lynniebeemuseoday 