Christmas carol favorites just keep on coming…

Each December, the family jukebox is filled with holiday favorites, ranging from traditional Christmas carols to contemporary, secular tunes. 

Picking which records to load in is both an art and a science…and subject to the whims and winds of the season.

 

Surely, there is no shortage of Christmas musicologists to consult. Editors at Billboard magazine said one of the oldest classic Christmas songs originated in England in the 16th century – “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.”

 

“It was unique for this day and age,” commented Kathryn Louderback of Canby, Ore., a pianist and composer. The music was not a hymn. She said: “It was created outside of the church, but ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ became one of the most well-loved Christmas songs of the time.” 

“Why has this particular Christmas carol stuck with us for so long? I think it’s because of the hope in the lyrics and the beauty and simplicity in the tune,” Louderback said.

 

In 1843, English author Charles Dickens referenced “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” in his classic novella, “A Christmas Carol.” The song describes how Jesus has come to “save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray” – all of which are epitomized by Dickens’ lead character Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

Writing for Northern Wilds magazine in Grand Marais, Minn., Elle Andra-Warner revealed that the first Canadian Christmas carol was written in 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit missionary, who came to explore New France in 1625.

                                   

He lived among the Huron people along the Georgian Bay near modern-day Midland, Ontario. 

Known as the “Huron Carol” or “Twas in the Moon of Wintertime,” his song was set to the melody of a French folk tune. When the English lyrics were written in 1926 by Canadian songwriter Jesse Edgar Middleton, “the words were apparently made to fit the melody rather than a direct translation,” Andra-Warner said.

“The ‘Huron Carol’ is about Jesus born in a lodge made of broken bark; swaddled in the robe of rabbit skin; hunters replacing the shepherds; and the Magi being chiefs bearing gifts of fox and beaver pelts.”

One of the world’s most popular Christmas carols is “Silent Night.” It was first performed in 1818 at St. Nicola Church in Obendorf, Austria, near Salzburg.

It’s based on a poem written in 1816 by a young Catholic priest, the Rev. Joseph Mohr.

He had the bright idea to recite his poem while playing his guitar at midnight mass on Christmas Eve. He ran that idea by his friend, Franz Xaver Gruber, the church’s choir master and organist.

 

Gruber said that a song would be even better. With only a few hours to spare, Gruber composed the melody for Mohr’s “Stille Nacht.” They performed the song that night along with the choir. Afterward, churchgoers “spoke of a Christmas miracle” that occurred that night. 

The Rev. John Freeman Young, an Episcopal priest in Louisiana, translated “Silent Night” into English in 1859. Today, the carol is sung in more than 300 different languages and dialects.

 

In 2011, “Silent Night” was declared an “intangible cultural heritage” by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

The world’s best-selling all-time modern Christmas song is “White Christmas,” written by Irving Berlin for the 1941 movie “Holiday Inn.” The song was “recycled” for the 1954 feature film “White Christmas.”

 

Authors Dave Marsh and Steve Propes wrote: “‘White Christmas’ changed Christmas music forever, both by revealing the huge potential market for Christmas songs and by establishing the theme of home and nostalgia that would run through Christmas music evermore.”