The eighteenth century was, in my opinion, the golden-age of hymn-writing. A goodly number of our favourite Christmas hymns were written during this era. There is one hymn, however, written by a Norfolk Baptist minister by the name of Edward Trivett (1712‒1792) that is certainly not among contemporary favs.
Trivett was possibly raised in the Norfolk Baptist church at Worstead, where he became the pastor in 1742, a pastorate that lasted for fifty years. Around 390 were baptized during that time and received into the church as members. And a dozen or so men were sent out from the church as pastors.
Of the few literary remains of Trivett’s ministry, one stands out: a hymnal simply entitled Hymns and Spiritual Songs, which went through two editions.[1] The first edition of this hymnal was printed in London in 1755 and self-published by Trivett. A second edition was printed by the Norwich bookseller Richard Beatniffe, who had gotten involved in printing as well as bookselling in 1766.[2] There is no date on this second edition, but a poem at its close on the death of John Gill, which took place in 1771, places the second edition’s publication after this date. In his exhaustive A Baptist Bibliography, Edward C. Starr gives 1772 as the date for the second edition.[3] Trivett requested that readers of his hymnal not judge his hymns on the basis of their poetic finesse, for he had sought to write hymns that accord with sound doctrine and holiness, “hymns … adapted to the doctrines of free grace.”[4]
The hymn that I would like to ponder in this brief essay is entitled “On Christmas.” I came across it this past summer of 2024 when I was preparing a lecture on Trivett for a doctoral study in Norfolk. I was quite surprised to find it, as eighteenth-century Baptists normally followed the tradition of their Puritan forebears and did not celebrate Christmas. The entire hymn runs as follows:
Jesus was born in Bethlehem,
On the appointed day;
As witness by the Angel, when
He in the manger lay.
Whether in autumn, or the spring,
The time uncertain be;
But if Tebeth to test we bring,
That can’t with things agree.
Because Marchesvan’s winter rain,
The shepherds put to flight;
They can’t till then a watch maintain,
Over the flocks by might.
Jesus was born most certainly,
And did for sinners bleed;
But as the time, none can define,
Let’s praise him for the deed.
While heart and strength as one combine,
To celebrate Christ’s birth;
May faith and love in songs divine,
Rise to celestial mirth.
And by obedience chearfully,
Set up a monument.
Of pray’r and watching constantly,
Until our days are spent.
But those that riot, swear and lie,
And Christmas spend in sin;
Without a turn, in hell must burn,
When Jesus comes again.[5]
At first reading, this text probably supplies the key reason why this hymn has probably not been sung since Trivett’s ministry: the first half of the hymn appears to be a classic Puritan polemic against the dating of Christmas. The incarnation is joyfully affirmed as well as our Lord’s death. But the time of year when he took on human flesh is disputed as Trivett seeks to demonstrate from his use of the Jewish calendar. Tebeth (or Tevet) is the tenth month on the Jewish religious calendar, and usually falls in December or January, while Marchesvan (or Cheshvan) is the eighth month, coming in October or November. The essence of the argument of stanzas two and three is that Christ could not have been born in either of these months. Though agnostic about the time, the hymn’s fourth stanza nevertheless encourages an attitude of praise for the Incarnation and thus prepares the singer for the instruction of the second half of the hymn on how Christmas ought to be celebrated.
With all of their “heart and strength” as well as their “faith and love,” Christians are to “celebrate Christ’s birth” in song, an anticipation of “celestial mirth.” This note about heaven’s joy in relation to the Incarnation provides something of a corrective to the somber Puritan critique of Christmas in the earlier stanzas. Celebrating the joys of Christmas, as the penultimate stanza then reminds the singer, should issue in a cheerful life of Christian obedience, one marked especially by prayer and spiritual watchfulness.
The final stanza seems to return to the atmosphere of the first half of the hymn: a sober warning about spending Christmas in sinful practices. Those who do such—if there is no change of heart (“without a turn”)—face a hellish future. But there is a positive note here: those who celebrate the first advent of Christ have the privilege of knowing that there will be a second advent, when heaven’s perpetual Christmas joy will flood the earth.
[1] Edward Trivett, Hymns and Spiritual Songs. In Two Books, 2nd ed. (Norwich: R. Beatniffe, [1772]). Surprisingly, there is no mention of this hymnal nor Trivett in John Julian’s definitive A Dictionary of Hymnology, 2nd ed. (1907, New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1957), 2 vols.
[2] David Stoker, “Popular Print in a Regional Capital: Street Literature and Public Controversy in Norwich, 1701-1800” in Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. David Atkinson and Steve Rould (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023), 103.
[3] Edward C. Starr, A Baptist Bibliography (Rochester, NY: American Baptist Historical Society, 1976), 24:41.
[4] Trivett, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, iii-iv. I have modernized the capitalization in the quotes from the hymnal. I have left the original spelling.
[5] Trivett, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 26-27: Book I, Hymn XXIX.
