Christina Georgina Rossetti was born December 5, 1830, in St. Pancras, London, the daughter of an Italian refugee who became a professor at King’s College, London. Her first verses of poetry were published by her grandfather when she was 12. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a famous poet and painter, used her beautiful face as a model for the virgin Mary in his painting Ecce Ancilla Domini.

This sensitive hymn about the birth of Jesus is one of four Christmas Poems in her Poetical Works, 1904, which carries the note “written before 1872,” and was titled “A Christmas Carol.” It began life as a hymn in the English Hymnal, 1906 (Church of England), and has been used by many hymnals since that time, continuing to gain in popularity. The last line Originally was “Yet what I can I give Him, Give my heart.”

Christina twice broke off proposals of marriage, once because her fiancé became a Catholic. As a result of this sorrow and a lingering illness, she sought and found comfort in her sincere religious devotion. She died on December 29, 1894.

The tune name UINTA (pronounced “you-IN-ta”) is the middle name of the composer’s wife, Harriet Uinta Schwender-Hooper; of their daughter, Janice Uinta Hooper-Lind; and of Harriet’s mother, Esther Uinta Clark- Schwender. It is also the name of a tribe of American Indians, and a range of mountains in Utah.

The music was composed by Wayne Hooper (1920- ), especially for the Hymnsingers, a group made up of the King’s Heralds Quartet, whose music has been heard on the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcast for more than 50 years, beginning in 1937; Del Delker, contralto soloist since 1947 on the same program; and Maurita (Bunny) Phillips-Thornburgh, music teacher, clinician, choral director, and soloist with the Roger Wagner Chorale and other choirs and orchestras in America and Europe. It was first published in a little book of Christmas carols titled The First Noel, which was offered in 1964 as a gift to all who sent contributions for the support of this international radiobroadcast of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The tune associated with this text in most hymnals is CRANHAM, by the great English composer Gustav Holst (see SDAH 224), which is given as an alternate tune.