JERUSALEM—For decades, people have debated why, in the much beloved Christmas song “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” a child shivers in the cold and yet a shepherd boy says to a mighty king, “Let us bring him silver and gold.” Many argue a plain old blanket would have been a much better gift. Now, a professor in the Department of Classical Physics and Popular Music at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says she knows why silver and gold make the most sense—and it’s all backed by physics.
According to Sarah L. Cohen-Chan, PhD, most people believe that the song’s lyrics, written by Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker, refer to the biblical story of Jesus’s birth, when he was said to have been brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the Magi, often called the Three Wise Men. But even if the Magi’s gold is what the songwriters were referring to, she says, the burning-cold question in many listeners’ minds is still why and how silver and gold would have helped the freezing infant. In fact, a few in the fashion and textiles worlds have pointed out that a handmade wool hoodie or blanket with the child’s monogrammed initials “JC” would have been a wonderfully personal and truly unique gift also conducive to staying warm.
After a decade studying the song’s lyrics, Cohen-Chan, who teaches classical physics in the context of popular music and vice versa, thinks that people who say baby Jesus should have received a gift conducive to warmth are, well, getting warm but not quite there. “The reason the shepherd boy asks the mighty king to bring silver and gold,” she says, “is because those metals are both very conductive. In fact, silver is the best conductor of electricity, and gold third. Knowing that, isn’t it obvious now? They would have made excellent wiring for an electric blanket.” But, with palpable frustration in her voice, she adds that there still remains something in the song she can’t explain: “How the hell did the night wind and little lamb pick up the Galilean dialect of Aramaic to talk to the shepherd boy? Sure, Aramaic is a simpler language than, say, Hebrew, but do you realize how hard it must have been to learn in one night? And the fact that both learned it seems pretty farfetched to me.”
