The choir of King s College Cambridge performs the traditional Christmas concert
Credit: Benjamin Sheen
The nation has spoken, the list is in, and Songs of Praise yesterday revealed the UK’s Top 10 Favourite Christmas Carols. We sing them in churches, chapels, streets and schools every year, wrap presents and decorate our Christmas trees to their accompaniment, know all the words by heart – but how much do we know about the stories behind them?
Here are just some of the histories and controversies, the secret political messages and famous names attached to your favourite carols.
10. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
It’s a rare carol that swaps cradles and shepherds for “Satan’s tyranny” and “death’s dark shadows”, and perhaps that’s the appeal of this wonderfully brooding, solemn hymn. There’s no exuberant rejoicing in a 15th-century melody that may have originally been used as processional music for burial rites. The words, a colourful translation of a Latin an
December 14, 2020
It’s time for Christmas music! Technically, of course, if you’re traditional about these things, it’s time for Advent music. Advent is the beautiful four-week season that
precedes Christmas, a time of waiting in darkness for the light of Christ to dawn. During this tumultuous year of 2020, the season of Advent, and all that comes with it, has much to say to worshippers (read an essay I wrote on Advent and the hymns and carols particular to that season here).
Today we must admit that Advent and Christmas are often somewhat jumbled in our minds. In this year of unique trials and tribulations especially, many of us may feel, alongside Mame, that we “need a little Christmas, right this very minute.”