Christmas Carols

I have been thinking a lot lately about the Christmas carols that are found in our hymnals. I am sure most of us know that some of them are not very biblical. Certainly that has been my mindset, and in case you are wondering, yes, I do agree.

But I never really stopped to look at what makes them un-biblical. Lately I have looked over a few, but I almost think I am more confused now about the whole issue!

For instance, many of our Christmas carols are about the angels singing. And I know that that is an issue to some, because the Bible never ever says that angels sing. Whenever there are any angels, they are always "saying" not, "singing." For real, go look at Luke 2 again, and it clearly says, "the angel said." Did you know that?

But then I have also heard the issue that the word for "said" there in the original language could mean sing, or talk. So I'm confused. Does the fact that the song says the angels sang make it unbiblical?

Another song I was looking at was the song "We 3 Kings." As long as I can remember I have viewed this song as a big no-no at Christmas time, because we do not know how many Wise men there were, and they weren't kings either. (Check Matthew 2 out for that bit of info!) But I really got to looking at the rest of the words to that song, and the hymn isn't about the wise men at all, really. If focuses more on the gifts they brought, and each verse talks about one of the gifts - Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It tells why those particular gifts were brought, and how they forshadowed Christ's death. Its actually really neat! So because we do not know for sure how many of these wise men there were, and we do know that there was 3 gifts, is this song unbiblical?

I'm not trying to start a mutiny here, these are just some of my thoughts about our hymns, and I am hoping you all will chime in. What is your opinion? Am I missing some other doctrinal error in these songs?? Which songs do you steer away from, and which ones do you embrace?