Is “The Lamb” by Sir John Tavener Really a Christmas Song?

Is “The Lamb” by Sir John Tavener really a Christmas song?

Actually no, although it is often performed in the context of Christmas, and does include a reference to the incarnation of Christ. If you remember your English lit. class, you'll know that William Blake, who wrote the words, was an early Romantic mystic. He claimed to have had visions from age four onwards and and was actually more interested in his art than his poetry.

He and his wife put out an illustrated edition of some of his poems and hand colored each page. “The Lamb” is from his poetry collection Songs of Innocence. It seems like a simple little ditty, almost a child's poem, until you look at it closely. A literal lamb is asked if he knows who made him. The answer is that someone who “calls himself a Lamb” did so. And this person also “became a little child,” so there's the Christmas idea. Both the literal lamb and the speaker in the poem (who calls himself a child) are called lambs also (“called by his name”), which I assume refers to the idea of Christ the Good Shepherd with his flock. So a beautiful circularity of ideas is developed: the literal lamb-->the Lamb of God -->the holy Child-->his human lambs-->the literal lamb.

Blake apparently wanted his Songs to be sung, not read, but his original melody is now lost. Ralph Vaughn Williams (and Allen Ginsberg(!) both composed music for the poem. Sir John Tavener said of what we're singing that "'The Lamb' came to me fully grown and was written in an afternoon and dedicated to my nephew Simon for his 3rd birthday." The piece has enjoyed great success, which it certainly deserves.