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Three Magi Walk into Trinity Church (in 1858)…

John Henry Hopkins, Jr.

Today, Christians around the world celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, known in some cultures as Three Kings Day. The culmination of the Christmas season, it commemorates the visitation of the three wise men, or Magi, to the infant Christ.

Many congregations will sing the carol We Three Kings as they celebrate:

We three kings of Orient are;

Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain, moor and mountain,

Following yonder star.

The song was written by the Rev. John Henry Hopkins, Jr., around 1857. Hopkins was born in Pittsburgh in 1820 and was ordained a deacon (in a service at Trinity Church) in 1850. He founded the Church Journal of New York and edited it for many years. He was also a noted church musician who wrote a popular volume titled Carols, Hymns, and Songs that went through at least four editions in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He moved in the same circles as Trinity’s longtime rector, the Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix.

We Three Kings was published in the 1863 edition of Carols, Hymns, and Songs, but legend holds that it was written in 1857, either for a pageant at General Theological Seminary or as a gift to Hopkins’ nieces and nephews. In either case, it’s safe to say that Trinity Church was among the first places We Three Kings was performed.
On December 18, 1858, Dix, an avid diarist, wrote:

…new Christmas carol out, by John Henry Hopkins. I like it very much and bought 100 copies for the children [of the St. Paul’s Chapel School]…

On Christmas Day, he writes of their performance:

Weather most delightful. Went down to the Sunday School and practiced with the children for the last time before the service. At half past ten precisely the children and teachers were all in the church around the chancel. They commenced with their carols: 1. Christ was born on Xmas-Day*, 2. Three Kings of Orient, 3. Once in Royal David’s City, 4. While shepherd’s watched their flocks by night. They were never sung so well before.

*Note that Dix uses the abbreviation “Xmas,” occasionally attacked today for removing the “Christ” from Christmas. Dix, familiar with biblical Greek, knew that “X” was the first two letter of “Christ” in Greek, and used it to stand for the entire word.

Posted January 6, 2012

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