Our children get a phone call from Santa and presents under the tree. Adults go to the office Christmas party and send Christmas cards to old friends. We both go to the parades and watch the specials. But there is a lot more to Christmas than just Santa phone calls and Christmas parties. You can really hear it in our dearest of Christmas hymns.
Some of our hymns have been around for a good bit. "God rest ye merry, Gentleman" is from the 1400's. Most of the time it is sung a bit wrong. Wrong, you say? Yep. Notice the comma as it changes the meaning of the line. It doesn't change the fact that it is just so fun to sing. As fun of a song as it is to sing, it does lack the slow beauty of "It came Upon a Midnight Clear". That one was written by an American preacher as a poem. In 1850 he sent it to Richard Storrs Willis to set it to music. Willis had trained under Mendelssohn and wrote the tune. The music it's self is called "Carol" (that makes sense) except in the UK where it is called "Noel". Speaking of Mendelssohn, He wrote the music to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". It is not known when he wrote it but it was published in 1939. It is considered one of the four greatest Anglican hymns.
There are so many carols and each has its own story and everybody has a favorite. "O Holy Night" is one on a lot of list. It was commissioned by a preacher to Placide Cappeau. He wanted a Christmas poem and what he got was "Minuit, chretiens". It means "Midnight, Christians". From there Adolphe Adam (no s ) tooled it into the song we still sing. But some songs have a little surprise behind them. Do you know what carol was written asking for peace when the Soviet Union was doing naughty things down in Cuba? It's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" It was written by a duo and the first name of one of them was Noel. And as a funny note they did another, non-Christmas, classic. They did "Rain, rain. Go away". Back to older songs there is old Welsh hymn we know as "Deck the Halls". No need to write down the welsh title as welsh doesn't even look like a real language.
There are so many great carols because they have been writing them for so long from so many countries. Not all countries or even most countries but there are more than enough to keep us singing. We have some from Germany, like "O Tannenbaum", aka "O Christmas Tree". Really, a tannenbaum is a fir tree but in German the word gets used to mean Christmas tree too. The words were written in the early 1800's by an organist but the tune is a different story. Like many songs or hymn of the day it was based on a folk tune and even back then it was old. Another great German carol isn't really German but Austrian (same language though). It's some of the only German most people know, "Stille Nacht". You can translate that one yourself.
Funny as it might seem, more carols are written every year and 100 years from now people will still sing it. I wonder what it will be?
Some of our hymns have been around for a good bit. "God rest ye merry, Gentleman" is from the 1400's. Most of the time it is sung a bit wrong. Wrong, you say? Yep. Notice the comma as it changes the meaning of the line. It doesn't change the fact that it is just so fun to sing. As fun of a song as it is to sing, it does lack the slow beauty of "It came Upon a Midnight Clear". That one was written by an American preacher as a poem. In 1850 he sent it to Richard Storrs Willis to set it to music. Willis had trained under Mendelssohn and wrote the tune. The music it's self is called "Carol" (that makes sense) except in the UK where it is called "Noel". Speaking of Mendelssohn, He wrote the music to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". It is not known when he wrote it but it was published in 1939. It is considered one of the four greatest Anglican hymns.
There are so many carols and each has its own story and everybody has a favorite. "O Holy Night" is one on a lot of list. It was commissioned by a preacher to Placide Cappeau. He wanted a Christmas poem and what he got was "Minuit, chretiens". It means "Midnight, Christians". From there Adolphe Adam (no s ) tooled it into the song we still sing. But some songs have a little surprise behind them. Do you know what carol was written asking for peace when the Soviet Union was doing naughty things down in Cuba? It's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" It was written by a duo and the first name of one of them was Noel. And as a funny note they did another, non-Christmas, classic. They did "Rain, rain. Go away". Back to older songs there is old Welsh hymn we know as "Deck the Halls". No need to write down the welsh title as welsh doesn't even look like a real language.
There are so many great carols because they have been writing them for so long from so many countries. Not all countries or even most countries but there are more than enough to keep us singing. We have some from Germany, like "O Tannenbaum", aka "O Christmas Tree". Really, a tannenbaum is a fir tree but in German the word gets used to mean Christmas tree too. The words were written in the early 1800's by an organist but the tune is a different story. Like many songs or hymn of the day it was based on a folk tune and even back then it was old. Another great German carol isn't really German but Austrian (same language though). It's some of the only German most people know, "Stille Nacht". You can translate that one yourself.
Funny as it might seem, more carols are written every year and 100 years from now people will still sing it. I wonder what it will be?