Vonnahme family blog

As part of doing the family musical number on Christmas Eve, I typeset our own sheet music for the first time ever, using the cool free tool GNU Lilypond.

So, without further ado, here is the sheet music, including lyrics and guitar chords, in PDF format and in the Lilypond markup language, in case anyone out there has a use for it.

I should also give credit to Sufjan Stevens for recording the song on a weird kids album from Paper Bag Records and thereby introducing me to it.

I love the lyrics. In the middle of a setting where humans in Rome and Jerusalem were acting like the human-devouring empire-beasts of Daniel’s prophecies, we have beasts of the stable, receiving the (later traditional) gift of speech on Christmas Eve and becoming more humanlike in worship around the newborn Jesus. The Messiah’s birth is the beginning of the New Creation, in which the first creation will eventually be fully redeemed and restored.

Over the weekend Betsy, Cirdan, Heidi, Rick and I skied out to Lee’s cabin in the White Mountains. It was a lot of fun and three month old Cirdan was simply delightful. He didn’t even mind snowflakes falling on his little bottom when Betsy changed his diaper en route!

Here are a few pictures from the trip. We’re looking forward to going again in a couple weeks with a larger group and all three of our kids!