Let's Reorganize the Christmas Carol Canon!

I'm sure we all have one or two Christmas carols that we'd like to throw out of the Christmas carol canon. My picks are "O Holy Night," "Angels We Have Heard On High," and "The Little Drummer Boy." I'm sure we also have a couple of Christmas carols we'd like to sing more often during December. I propose that we add Charles Wesley's Let Earth and Heaven Combine to the list.

I've always loved the line "veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity" in Wesley's Hark the Herald Angels Sing, so I was very excited to discover that Wesley wrote an entire hymn about the incarnation. The melody needs some work, but the lyrics are stellar.

So, enjoy this great hymn and let me know what other carols you think should be thrown out or added to the canon.

Let earth and Heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made Man.

He laid His glory by,
He wrapped Him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days He here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.

See in that Infant’s face
The depths of deity,
And labor while ye gaze
To sound the mystery
In vain; ye angels gaze no more,
But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love
That hath the Savior brought;
The grace is far above
Of men or angels’ thought:
Suffice for us that God, we know,
Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh t’appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see His glorious face:
His love shall then be fully showed,
And man shall all be lost in God.