Born in the night

Born in the night. Geoffrey Jackson Ainger* (1925-2013). This is a simple but effective carol, with a slight cutting edge in stanza 1, emphasising the Christ child as ‘A long way from your home’, presumably heaven, but also containing the suggestion of a travelling family in winter: that Bethlehem is a long way from Nazareth and the earthly home of the family. The child Jesus is ’born in a borrowed room’, which emphasises the sense of the family being temporarily homeless. The last two stanzas link the birth of the Christ-child to Passion-tide and the Apocalypse (‘Go to your cross of wood’ and ‘You’re coming soon to reign’). It was written during Ainger’s time as a Methodist minister at...