“O Little Town of Bethlehem” has shaped how millions of English speakers imagine the Palestinian town where Jesus was born: a small place, still and peaceful, resting under the stars. The wars and struggles of recent decades invite us to question whether that image is true. And yet, “Bethlehem is still a very little town,” says Stephanie Saldaña, a writer and mother raising her family in this religiously and culturally diverse place. “It is a small place where everybody knows each other.”

Still more striking is how closely the need that gave rise to the carol echoes the present moment. In 1865, after the Civil War devastated the United States, Philadelphia rector Phillips Brooks was broken by grief—Lincoln’s assassination and the loss of his younger brother to cholera while serving in the Union Army. Seeking solace, Brooks traveled to Bethlehem. What he found there—peace, stillness, God present in a small community—he later put into words and set to music as a carol for children who had lost fathers to war.

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Now, more than 150 years later, that same carol reaches those in the Holy Land today, reeling from pandemic and war—and far beyond—to offer us what it has always offered: stillness, God's presence, enduring hope.

In this fifth season finale, host Maggi Van Dorn speaks with:

The music featured in this episode was generously gifted to “Hark!” Our thanks to Frank Tuson, Richard Gilewitz, Salt of the Sound, Smalltown Poets, St. Paul’s Boys Choir School, Cambridge, Mass., The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, U.K., The Roches, and Tony Alonso, courtesy of GIA Publications, Inc. Our theme music was produced by Frank Tuson.

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