Lately, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my favorite Christmas song. Yes, I know that Christmas is almost two months behind us and that Lent starts next week. No, I didn’t mention my favorite Christmas song as a way of introducing a reflection on the symbolic connections between Christmas and Easter or Advent and Lent. It’s actually just that we’ve gotten a fair amount of snow in my part of the world recently, and my favorite Christmas song is a song about snow. Or rather, it’s a song about the still silence that settles on the earth during a snowfall.

Scientifically speaking, freshly fallen snow actually does silence the earth. The tiny open spaces between and within each flake of snow absorb sound, while the encounter between sound waves and the icy crystals comprising each flake of snow creates friction, slowing the waves and hampering the propagation of sound. The result is a sound-absorbing blanket of glistening white on the earth. The sound-absorption capacity of snow varies from snowfall to snowfall, depending upon factors such as air temperature and the amount of moisture in the flakes. In general, snow has a sound-absorption rating between .5 and .9 on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 meaning that no sound is absorbed and 1 meaning that all sound is absorbed. Thus, depending upon the conditions, a freshly fallen blanket of snow can absorb anywhere between 50% and 90% of sound in the immediate vicinity.

That’s powerful stuff.

Yet it’s a power that brings sweet, gentle peace and comfort and metaphorical warmth, not a power that brings fear, threats, or harsh, indifferent coldness. This snowy Christmas song is probably my favorite precisely because it evokes the unique quality of snow: a quality that combines power with peace.

Leise Rieselt der Schnee, a song that has no equivalent in English, began its life in 1895 as a poem written by a protestant pastor named Eduard Ebel, who ministered in the northeastern portion of Germany near Poland. It’s unclear whether Ebel wrote the tune or borrowed it from an existing folk song. Either way, the song remains one of the most popular Christmas songs in the German-speaking world.

The first verse paints a picture of the perfect peace generated by a snowfall: flakes falling softly on a still, frozen lake surrounded by a forest of white-frosted trees. The second verse brings the peaceful power of the snowfall inside, describing warm hearts, the silencing of sorrow and grief, and the fading of life’s worries. The third verse shares the peaceful power of the snowfall with all the world, referencing the choirs of angels who announced the ultimate moment of peace on earth: the Nativity of the Christ Child.

How marvelous to reflect on the stories of the Divine, yet lowly, child who offers peace for all the world through the power of humility rather than the power of intimidation! How marvelous to remember, embrace, and model the power of humility each time we encounter a pure, gentle blanket of snow stilling the earth! How marvelous to quiet our hearts as the snow quiets the earth, stilling our thoughts and anxieties and reconnecting with those aspects of life that really matter: creativity, joy, love, and all the very human-nesses that make up the experience of being human! Now more than ever—as societies struggle to balance conventional notions of material prosperity and the sanctity of profit-above-all-else with questions of who should have access to natural resources, public services, the fulfillment of basic needs, and the “other side” of arbitrary lines on arbitrary maps—do we need the peaceful power of humility and lowliness to restore our reverence for creativity, joy, love, and all the very human-nesses of humanity.

Bring on the snow.

Bring on the humility.

Bring on the power.

Bring on the peace.

Bring on the humanity.

– Lori Randall, on a sunny February day covered in fallen snow