How can I keep from singing? A holy response to an evil world

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE

When tyrants tremble sick with fear
And hear their death knell ringing
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?

“How Can I Keep from Singing?” is an American folksong originating as a Christian hymn. The author of the lyrics was known only as ‘Pauline T’, and the original tune was composed by American Baptist minister Robert Lowry. The song is frequently, though erroneously, cited as a traditional Quaker or Shaker hymn.” –Wikipedia

I first heard this song (and in this wording, as there are other, more strictly Christian versions of the words, while this version is quite universalist) in a Quaker meeting in Atlanta, GA, so I can be forgiven for believing it was a Quaker hymn as I was told there. In fact, this “social justice” version of the song was popularized by Pete Seeger and other folk revivalists of the time, and the Quakers of the 1960s embraced it as their own, which is how the misconception arose.
OK, fine, you say. But what does this have to do with Christmas or any other winter holiday? Well, let’s see. Have you heard of a dude called Herod the Great? Now there was a tyrant! Sycophantic, paranoid, greedy, and an absolute beast to his own family. Does that remind you of any notable contemporary figures?

Ever since the 2024 election, and especially after the current incumbent president’s first 100 days, I have been very struck by the parallels between the US president and Herod. Part of that was due to the gruesome, indeed loathsome to contemplate, manner of Herod’s death, paralleled by vague hints and rumors of some disgusting details of the president’s health. (Which may or may not be true.)
But in the spirit of the coming holiday, let’s start off with the Slaughter of the Innocents. According to Matthew’s gospel, but not found in the Book of Luke, there were three “wise men” who had clairvoyant foreknowledge of the birth of a Very Important Boy Child in Bethlehem. In the folk-rock Christmas carol by Bruce Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” these are the “three wise astrologers.” See youtube.com/watch?v=YmZlYiMCvSc. The song goes on to say:
…the governing body of the Holy Land
Is that of Herod, a paranoid man
Who when he hears there’s a baby born King of the Jews
Sends death squads to kill all male children under two…

The gospel claimed Herod had his minions kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem specifically. Bethlehem was not a very big town, and that would not have been the Ancient World equivalent of a worldwide event, so it’s hard to tell if this is real or a legend. But there is stronger historical evidence about Herod killing threats to his throne in his own family, including his three eldest sons. So possibly this just accreted onto the oral tradition of Jesus as a way of showing Herod’s depravity and what Christians were up against thirty-plus years later, when the not-much-better heirs of Herod were in charge.
In any case, the slaughter of the innocents, the holy family’s flight into Egypt, and the gruesome death of Herod in the following one to four years were all favorite subjects in Christian lore until the early 20th Century or so, and inspired some very beautiful late Victorian/post-Raphaelite paintings (and one deeply weird Carravaggio.) Given how popular this theme is in visual art, it’s surprising that it’s not mentioned in more hymns and carols, a fact that makes Cockburn’s modern carol all the more dear to me.

Anyone who wished for the God of Judea to make an example of Herod for his abuse of the country and people put in his charge was perhaps too amply rewarded. The manner of Herod’s death, whenever it was in the early BCE era, did make the Ancient World equivalent of headlines. He was weeks dying, and in such intense pain that he attempted to stab himself to death. His torso was swollen and his genitalia were destroyed by gangrene, his skin was afire with itching, his stomach and bowels were in agony, and he smelled like he was already dead.
Traditional stories have assigned this to gonorrhea or some other venereal disease, but modern medicine, in the early 2000’s, decided it was chronic kidney disease, simultaneous multiple organ failure, and a complication of Fourier’s gangrene, a staphylococcus infection so rare that there have only been about 500 cases in all of medical history. So here was a case of a tyrant, sick with fear, and hearing his death knell.
Herod was a pretty hard act to follow, but tyrants through the intervening years have had a go at it. How does the current president and his cabinet of weirdos measure up on the tyrant scale? I’ll just confine my discussion of this question to the slaughter of innocents.

There are a lot of examples of excess, cruel and unnecessary deaths of children resulting from policies, mismanagement, and executive orders in the first months of the current administration. The largest, in terms of numbers of deaths, was actually executed by Musk and his DOGE boys, although probably under orders from the White House, when they deleted USAID and defunded (unconstitutionally) scores of humanitarian aid projects. But since these are not American children dying, it’s not reported as mainstream news so you only see it in science journals or left-wing sources. For instance, a recent Democracy Now piece used input from Dr. Atul Gawande, an expert in the field, to report that excess deaths of USAID recipients since the cutoff have already (in mid-November) reached hundreds of thousands, with more than half being children. See democracynow.org/2025/11/13/usaid
Other examples of ways that neocon policies (not to mention batshit crazy policies like discouraging or even eliminating vaccines) can cause excess deaths of children – the aforementioned vaccines, slashing Medicaid or adding impossible “work requirements,” slashing SNAP, restricting WIC, defunding programs to prevent suicide and/or bullying, going backwards on bodily autonomy (abortion, gender supporting healthcare, parental rights), and finally, criminalizing and dehumanizing immigration status.

Just today as I was writing this, I got one of those “sign these letters to your representatives” emails about Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s bill to close all the private prisons housing victims of the indiscriminate and deeply racist ICE raids. An article I shared on Facebook recently describes the unbelievably cruel and oppressive conditions that innocent children, ripped from their parents arms at gunpoint, are suffering in some of these institutions. I cannot bring myself to type all the horrors I read there. Here’s the link: theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/28/ice-detention-texas-children.
Anyway, to get back to singing and holy responses… I am an unflinchingly political person, but to me the most satisfying way to strike back against evil politics is through a response of beauty and/or love. Your mileage may vary of course. Singing has always been a big feature of both leftist political rallies and demonstrations and traditional Protestant worship. They share a lot of the same repertoire, including “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Which also happens to be a sort of manifesto about how to respond to evil.

If you have been with me on my ten year journey of writing a philosophical piece about winter holidays, you will have picked up that I view these holidays as being related to fear of winter things – darkness, loneliness, poverty, hunger, and impending death. And the responses are – lights and fires, community, giving freely, feasting, and celebrating life. And sometimes, singing.
Bruce Cockburn, too, sees in this case the birth of Jesus as a promise of redemption. And How Can I Keep From Singing goes a step further. It says that when the darkness around you closes, that, especially is when you can hear “the real though far-off hymn that hails the new creation.” All the evil that tyrants do – it is evil and great suffering and even death result – but, it also serves to highlight the necessity and inevitability of a better world.
You don’t even have to be religious or sing religious songs to benefit from the power of opposing ugliness with beauty. Singing is now available as honest-to-God therapy, for trauma, depression, or a number of other ailments that are not reached by traditional medicine. The Nice News online magazine serendipitously had a November piece asking “Are You Singing Enough?” (See tinyurl.com/DKRatSSP-KeepSinging.) (I am pretty sure I am not singing enough.)

Elisha Ellis Madsen, board-certified music therapist and master of social work candidate, told Nice News. “Physiologically, singing regulates the nervous system through rhythmic breathing and vibration, which calm the body whether or not it ‘sounds good.’ Emotionally, it reawakens our capacity for play and self-expression — things many adults have lost touch with.” They go on to add: “In a world where isolation is rising and technology often replaces real connection, singing helps us return to our roots,” said Madsen. “It’s creative, embodied, and communal. It’s a simple way to feel human again.”
Of course, this is just a secular view, but as so often happens, science, especially around healing and mental wellness, is rediscovering things that religions already knew. I only had the time and energy to dip a small toe into the topic of the meaning of spirituality within music, and the place of music in various world religions. And even that little bit is way beyond the scope of this article.
But just as a wild and interesting example, consider the Navajo, or Dine. Their traditional way of life gave huge prominence to singing, a very particular kind of singing. Sacred songs, some so long they take days to perform, were memorized (and still are) by medicine people; these songs can restore a Navajo person to “Beauty” or harmony with nature and mental and physical health.

One of the things I encountered in my internet rambling was that as some Dine joined Christian denominations, there sprang up a lot of faith community members wanting music for this new path, and a lot of Navajo singers who wrote gospel songs, which sound just like any C&W gospel you might hear on the radio, but the words are in the Navajo language.
Another example is in Buddhism, where various cultures have created some unique types of sacred music, some vocal, but wordless, like the Tibetan “throat singing,” some with simple instruments like flutes or bells, which are used to aid devotees in accessing meditative mind states. The mystical branches of Abrahamic religions have this kind of meditative or ecstatic music too; think of Gregorian chants, Sufi ceremonies, and Appalachian shape note singing.
Beyond karaoke (nothing wrong with that, though, if it’s your jam) how can we spiritually_impoverished and digitally distracted people, living in the belly of the beast as we do, get some of this musical magic to heal our souls and renew us for the fight for decency and democracy?
There are various ways to do this. One is straight-up music therapy. There are a good number of successful established music therapists in the Twin Cities. The one downside to this approach is that it might be fairly costly and is probably not covered by your health insurance.

If you want to forge your own path, it might be cheaper and easier to just learn some songs and maybe guitar-playing, or if you already know these things, start it as a healing practice. Sing for yourself, or give small house concerts for your friends. There are also existing singalong events, especially around the holidays. A friend and I attended one of these last year that was held in the beautiful little chapel at Lakewood Cemetery. I found it very healing and inspiring, and even then thought I should do this more often. One of the things on my bucket list, that I may get around to this year, is to attend an audience singalong performance of Handel’s Messiah. If that doesn’t fix me, there is no hope for me!