Christmas Teacher Resources - ebook

Chapter 2 Christmas carols

As has been noted in Chapter 1, England had a rich tradition of writing and singing Christmas carols in the late Middle Ages. Originally, carols were songs for various occasions, including church holidays, e.g. spring or Easter, and usually they were performed by singers holding their hands and dancing in a circle. Singing and dancing carols was so popular that it is mentioned in many famous works of English literature from that period of time. For example, performing carols with joy and enthusiasm is noted in The Canterbury Tales (at a party in The Knight’s Tale), in Piers the Ploughman (at Easter), in The Owl and the Nightingale (at Christmas) and several times before, during and after Christmas in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (pronounced /sɜː ˈgɑwein/).

Because carols were linked to dancing and their origin was not religious, it took much time before they were accepted in church ceremonies. At first, priests warned people not to perform carols in church and illustrated that with amazing stories. The most famous one comes from a collection of French sermons translated into English in 1303 by Robert Mannyng. One of these sermons is illustrated with a story in which a group of people interrupted a church service with singing and dancing a carol. The scary result was that they could not stop singing and dancing for the next twelve months and some of them were so tired that they died.

Christmas carols were finally accepted in churches only after the singers had stopped dancing and the lyrics focused on Christmas topics. A famous illustration of that change can be found in the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where at Christmas musicians perform:

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| Aboute þe fyre vpon flet, and on fele wyse | around the fire, on the floor and |
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| /abute θe fire upon flet, and on fele wɪse/ | in various ways |
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| At þe soper and after, mony aþel songez | at supper and after it in |
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| /at θe soper and after, monɪ aðel songez/ | many different songs |
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| As coundutes of Krystmasse and carolez newe | like Christmas carols and |
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| /az kundutez of krɪstemase and karolez newe/ | other new carols |
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| With al þe manerly merþe þat mon may of telle | with all elegant joy about |
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| /wɪð al θe manerlɪ merθe ðat mon maj of tele/ | which a man can tell |
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The songs in the poem were sung in a castle in the evening but they had two different names: a coundute of Krystemasse (pronounced /kundute of krɪstemase/), also spelled condut or cundut, was a true Christmas carol focused on Christmas and ready to be performed at church, while a carol (also spelled in several different ways, e.g. carole, karolle, karoll, etc.) was a song inviting people to dance on any occasion which was joyful enough.

Later on, when the custom of singing and dancing carols on any celebration died down and they came to be associated only with Christmas, the difference between the two nouns disappeared and the first one went out of use. However, still today the religious songs performed at Christmas are not simply called carols, like the Polish kolędy, but Christmas carols, as if it were still necessary to distinguish them from carols written for some other time of the year.

The oldest English Christmas carol that has survived until now comes from the times of king John Lackland (1199-1216). However, it is written in French and uses only two English words because in that period, after the Norman Conquest of 1066, French was the language of the royal court and culture. Later on, carols were written in English but frequently included lines in Latin, which was then the language of church services (the tradition of using such lines survives until now in the much later English carol Angels We Have Heard on High and in the Polish carol Gdy się Chrystus Rodzi). All such early English Christmas carols were written by anonymous authors. The first one whose name is known was John of Grimestone (pronounced /ˈgraɪmstoʊn/), a member of the Franciscan Order, who wrote three Christmas carols in 1372.

The oldest collection of Christmas carols that has survived until now comes from 1426 and was written by John Audley (pronounced /ɔːdli/), a little-known priest and poet. Both his carols and many others from that period focused on a large variety of Christmas topics. Some of them were lullabies sung to put baby Jesus to sleep in the crib, other ones described the events surrounding His birth, e.g. the poor conditions of the stable where He was born, the reactions of the shepherds and angels who were present, the visit of the Wise Men, the star which guided them to Bethlehem, etc. Moreover, there were also carols describing various Christmas customs from those times, e.g. wassailing, i.e. singing Christmas carols door to door to collect food and drinks, or even Christmas hunting.

However, the tradition of singing Christmas carols broke down in the century following the Reformation in England and they went out of use. The reformers who were responsible for this dramatic change were called Puritans because they wanted to purify the Church of England from any Catholic influences. They believed that Christians should sing only psalms from the Bible and opposed any other kind of church music, including Christmas carols. At first the Puritans were not too influential, but their views started to gain popularity in the 1600s and they came to dominate Parliament in 1640.

The Puritans put their beliefs into practice and removed Christmas carols from all church services along with all other songs and then, in 1644, also prohibited celebrating Christmas for reasons that were discussed in more detail in Chapter 1. The celebration of Christmas was restarted in 1660, when the Puritans lost power, but the tradition of singing only psalms in church remained and Christmas carols were completely forgotten about.

They slowly started to come back in the 1700s, but in a very unusual way. They were not called carols but hymns, i.e. serious church songs, and they were written as remakes of Biblical psalms suitable for Christmas, printed on the final pages of church hymnbooks. These new carols were fully concentrated on Jesus Christ and paid little attention to Mary, the mother of Jesus, her husband Joseph, the shepherds, the animals in the stable where Jesus was born or its poor conditions. Consequently, they were completely different from the carols that were so popular in the late Middle Ages.

The first new Christmas carol of this kind was called When Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night. It was written by Nahum Tate (pronounced /ˈneɪhəm teit/) and it was printed in 1700 on the last page of a church hymnbook titled A New Version of the Psalms of David. Another carol introduced in the same way was Joy to the World, which is a remake of Psalm 98. More carols were written when English and American Protestants accepted the idea that besides psalms also hymns can be used in church. For example, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing was written in 1739 and soon after that Oh Come All Ye Faithful was translated into English from Latin.

However, a true revival of Christmas carol writing and singing came in the nineteenth century as a part of the Romantic interest in old customs and traditions. Romantic writers and editors started to print collections of Christmas carols that they discovered in different parts of the country, wrote on their own or translated. The first collection was published in 1823 by Davies Gilbert (pronounced /ˈdeɪvizˈgɪlbərt/) under a long but very clear title Some Ancient Christmas Carols with the Tunes to which They Were Formerly Sung in the West of England. This collection opened with The First Nowell, now frequently spelled The First Noel, and included eleven more carols.

The front page of the first collection of Christmas carols printed during the Romantic revival of Christmas traditions

In later years quite a few Christmas carols were also written by English and American poets and songwriters, e.g. Away in the Manger, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem or Once in David’s Royal City, which traditionally opens the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. Some other carols were translated, e.g. Silent Night, originally written in German, or Angels We Have Heard on High and O Holy Night, both originally French.

Many Christmas carols were also discovered in medieval manuscripts and songbooks, but only a few of them gained much popularity, e.g. We Wish You a Merry Christmas, The Holy and the Ivy or Good King Wenceslas. However, in order to make the newly written and translated Christmas carols sound as old as the ones they rediscovered, nineteenth century writers and editors frequently inserted old words and grammar into the lyrics that they published.

The Christmas carols that are the most popular in English speaking countries are presented below. Each carol is briefly introduced and then its lyrics are shown on the left. All the difficult words and grammar are underlined and explained on the right.

Joy to the World

Joy to the World was written in 1719 by Isaac Watts (pronounced /ˈaɪzək wɒts/), one of the most famous English church composers, who is the author of more than 700 church hymns. The lyrics are a remake of the second part of Psalm (pronounced /sɑm/) 98 (in Polish editions of the Bible it is Psalm 99 due to a numbering difference between Catholic and Protestant traditions). The tune is based on pieces selected from compositions by George Handel and arranged in 1839 by Lowell Mason.

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| 1. Joy to the world! The Lord | |
| is come. | |
| | has come |
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| Let earth receive her King; | may the Earth receive its King |
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| Let every heart prepare Him room; | prepare space for Him |
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| And heav’n and nature sing, | and may Heaven |
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| And heav’n and nature sing. | |
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| And heav’n and heav’n and nature sing. | |
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| | |
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| 2. Joy to the world, the Savior reigns | rules |
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| Let men their songs employ | sing |
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| While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains | rivers |
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| Repeat the sounding joy, | loud |
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| Repeat the sounding joy | |
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| Repeat the sounding joy | |
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| | |
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| 3. No more let sin and sorrows grow, | may sin and sorrows grow no more |
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| Nor thorns infest the ground; | start growing on the ground |
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| He comes to make His blessings flow | give His blessings |
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| Far as the curse is found, | as far as the sin of the first man |
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| Far as the curse is found, | |
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| Far as, far as the curse is found. | |
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| 4. He rules the world with truth and grace, | |
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| And makes the nations prove | show justice |
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| And wonders of His love, | miracles |
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| And wonders of His love, | |
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| And wonders, wonders of His love. | |
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