St. Martin's Cloak

The Cloak is a collection of audio vignettes—stories that reveal parishioners’ faith journeys. Share your thoughts by sending us an e-mail.

… she would come over Christmas Eve after the midnight service and we would just sing all kinds of things.

Martha Crowell

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Martha Crowell knew she wanted to be a music teacher by the time she was twelve. “It’s just where my heart is,” she says. Listen to Martha now as she sings her favorite Christmas song.

When I got asked what my favorite Christmas piece of music was, I thought, “Oh, my goodness. About 800 of them.”

But the thing that comes to me the most is “Child of God.” And the reason for that is my choir director and elementary music teacher and recorder-consort director and basic second Mom named Pat Brown, who was just an incredible force in my life musically. Not only did I see her in all those venues, but she would come over Christmas Eve after the midnight service and we would just sing all kinds of things. So everything is connected to her.

But the thing that mattered the very most to her was children.

So “Child of God” is: “If anybody asks you who I am, tell them I’m a child of God.”

And that is the most essential thing of anything about Christmas, which is the Incarnation. And then, by extension, all of us being children of God.

I’ve sung it with many many children now, and their faces as they sing it – how deeply they know when they’re singing it, makes it more of a favorite than anything else that I can imagine.

I understand that it’s in the African American tradition and I’ve known it most of my life. I’ve always loved the tune and the rhythm is kind of catchy. And it goes like this:

If anybody asks you who I am, who I am, who I am,
Tell them I’m a child of God.

If anybody asks you who I am, who I am, who I am.
Tell them I’m a child of God.