Love came down at Christmas

Love came down at Christmas. Christina Georgina Rossetti* (1830-1894). These verses appeared in Rossetti’s Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885), under the date ‘December 29’ (they were later given the title of ‘Christmastide’):

Love came down at Christmas,
  Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
  Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
  Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus, -
  But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
  Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
  Love the universal sign.

Although it contains the star and angels, it is quite different from the pictorial ‘In the bleak mid-winter’*. The Christ-child is now given the abstract designation of ‘love’, and the diffusion of love in life and worship is the theme of the hymn. Rossetti herself altered the last line in later printings, such as Verses (1893), from ‘Love the universal sign’ to ‘Love for plea and gift and sign’. It was first used as a hymn in the English Presbyterian Church Praise (1907) and then in the Oxford Hymn Book (1908). SofP and SofPE printed verse 1 line 4 as ‘Stars and angels gave the sign’, but although the two plurals go well together, the singular ‘star’, referring to the star that guided the Wise Men, is correct.

JRW