The Tabernacle Choir’s latest Christmas offering, the Live DVD O Holy Night, was released today, December 13, 2022, which has in turn sent me down the rabbit hole to try and find the oldest known Tab Choir recording of the title track. The earliest I have been able to track down so far is the following from their 1970 Gold-selling record Joy to the World:

It is of course, like most things MoTab, beautiful, rousing, soaring, and with a thrilling crescendo. Nevertheless, I can’t help but notice that this version lacks the all-important final verse, which reads:

“Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease”

That line, “Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother”, as penned by the Massachusetts minister John Sullivan Dwight, was explicitly abolitionist in nature. Indeed, Reverend Dwight wrote those lines in 1855, only 6 years before the outbreak of the Civil War, when anti-slavery sentiment in the North was at last going mainstream. (It was the same year that Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was published, to put that in context.)

These lines were also penned only 6 years after Brigham Young had codified a ban on Black priesthood ordination in LDS doctrine, and only 3 years after slavery was formally legalized in Utah territory.

Naturally, part of me wonders if the reason why the abolitionist verse was cut from the Tab choir arrangement in 1970 is because that same Black priesthood ban was still in effect.

Now, another part of me wants to be more charitable, and speculate that the reason why the 1970 version omits the last verse from “O Holy Night” is because many of the tracks on Joy to the World had their extra verses cut. This was recorded during the hegemony of vinyl LPs after all, when only a limited number of songs could be cut per side, and hence each track of necessity had to be kept tight to the 2-3 minute range.

But I’m afraid that explanation won’t fly either, because three tracks on Joy to the World were still allowed to expand into the 4 minute range–“Silent Night,” “The Christmas Song,” and “The Hallelujah Chorus”—and none of those were “O Holy Night”. That, as the kids say, is a choice.^[1]For reference: Johnny Mathis recorded a full version of “O Holy Night” with the abolitionist verse clear back in the Jim Crow year of 1958.

Hence, I cannot help but note that the next time “O Holy Night” gets recorded by the Tab Choir is on their excellent 1993 release Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, an album even shorter than Joy to the World (45 minutes vs 43)–yet this time the abolitionist verse has been restored. But then, the Priesthood ban had also been dead for 15 years.

And now it’s the Year of Our Lord 2022, and the Tabernacle Choir has no qualms whatsoever about naming an entire live album for an abolitionist hymn.

To be clear: These are good things! I’m glad the Tab Choir sings all the verses now, and has been for decades! I’m also glad the insane Priesthood ban ended, and that the Church officially renounced the folk doctrines that rationalized it in 2012-13, and that President Nelson has paired with the NAACP since 2020 in denouncing racism. But that’s not to say we don’t still have a very long way to go–the whole Brad Wilcox fiasco was only earlier this same calendar year, remember; we are still living in the aftermath of Utah slavery.

For that matter, the O Holy Night DVD still strangely focuses largely on Irish heritage, of all things; and though the Irish were indeed treated horrifically upon their first migrations to the Americas (even being labeled with the nonsensical moniker of “white Negroes” throughout the 19th century), they still weren’t literally enslaved like Africans, nor were the Irish ever denied the Priesthood, nor was “O Holy Night” written about their sufferings in particular. We are still white-washing an abolitionist hymn, and have not fully confronted our own shameful slave-owning past.

Hence, I think it worth emphasizing yet again this Christmas season that “O Holy Night” was first and foremost an abolition hymn; that the people who always sang the last verse were right; that those who cut the last verse (whether consciously or unconsciously) were wrong; and that if we ourselves are going to be worthy of singing it, then we need to be the ones who speak up the loudest in denouncing police brutality, voter suppression, prison labor exploitation, ethnic slurs, de facto segregation, and all the rest of slavery’s long-standing evil legacy.

In short, we need to repent, and behave as though we really are the Church of Jesus Christ, for in His name all oppression shall cease.