The Christmas season is not your savior. Christ is. Your inability to feel joy in response to a season says nothing about your relationship to your savior.
Wendell Berry could be described by many labels. More than anything else, he has been a voice of practical reason and concise cultural commentary in his more than 80 books published over six decades.
You might call it the Walmart of hymnals. It doesn’t drill down into any one category. It doesn’t specialize. But it covers most of the bases that most parishes and parishioners would expect.
As odd as it sounds, the song’s uncertain quality is actually quite fitting. Unlike other popular carols, “Emmanuel” is a song not for Christmas but for Advent.