Re: Christmas Carols Church Music
Onofre Alamillo
For every year of my life, these have made up my musical Christmas celebrations in worship, in concert, in choir and Sunday school class parties, United Methodist Women's meetings, at nursing homes, shut-in caroling, and singing with family and friends at home. While titles may vary, I suspect the musical experience is similar for many western Christians. It is our tradition.
I pulled out a 150-year old Methodist hymnal to see what Christmas hymns and carols people were singing in 1850. We would expect it to be quite different from today, since they had no radio, television, CDs, IPODs, movies, Broadway shows, Muzak, Internet, or shopping malls. As I looked through Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849), I was reminded of just how modern our "traditional" Christmas celebrations really are. Of all the Christmas music listed above, none of it not a single title is included in the 1849 Methodist hymnal. None of the above-mentioned core group of sacred carols and hymns is included in the 1857 edition of this hymnal, and none of the tunes with which we are so familiar are included.
Only "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night" was matched with the same tune (CHRISTMAS) used in our present hymnal. Wesley's "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" used HENDON, which is used in our hymnal with "Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know." All of the other Christmas hymns used texts and tunes most likely unfamiliar to most of us today.
So what constituted a typical, traditional Christmas musical experience for worshipers and revelers in 1850? That will take additional research, but it is true that the Christmas of 150 years ago was certainly quite different from the Christmas of today. We owe so much of our modern Christmas experience, including the reveling, the music, the gifting, and the sentimentality, to the impact of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Thomas Nast's creation of the image of the modern Santa Claus, the rise of American commercialism, and the development of technology. Only Dickens's A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, was in existence in 1850. The observance and celebration of Christmas in 1850 was a smaller, personal, private, and individual matter. The culture and technology of 1850 helped to determine the kind of Christmas the people experienced, just as the culture and technology of 2005 do today.
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I looked up differences between Christmas carols and other Christmas songs. Generally about carols being about nativity or some other traditional songs not necessary religious while other Christmas songs are about things like love, loneliness, fun, celebration etc. set around Christmas time. But different sources don't agree on the exact definition.
I guess everyone agrees that Silent Night and some others are carols and that Stop the Cavalry (by Jona Lewie) is not. But then there's Jingle Bells. According to some sources it's a carol. It's traditional albeit secular and initially not allowed in churches. Many people agree it's a carol without even considering to question it. But other sources say it's not a carol as it's not about nativity. Then there's 12 Days of Christmas.
Originally, carols - simple songs - were sung and often danced as a celebration of something joyous, often in the open air, by 'the common people'. It's said that the first carol was 'sung by angels from the sky', not surprisingly, at the first Christmas. The words still survive, apparently.
There are plenty of hymns which are relevant and could be sung as carols, but it seems simplicity is important, which obviates many of them. Being sung acapella is a factor - the kids asking for 'hush money' around now proving that!
Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, et al, are often called Christmas carols, but I'd consider them as Christmas songs - sung (traditionally?) during the Christmas period, sharing joy (?) but only reflecting the time of year rather than anything religious. We don't hear Jingle Bells often at other times of the year - unless you're at one of my gigs, where snippets seem to find themselves into some solo or other...
In the Middle Ages the term "carol" referred to a song in a particular musical form peculiar to England, though in the late Middle Ages carols were classified according to their various uses. Carol form begins with a refrain known as a "burden", and is followed by verses (stanzas) of uniform structure; the burden is repeated after each verse.
Not sure, but the wikipedia page here has some interesting, if not totally clarifying info: _carol .... considered a subset of "christmas music" and typically based on medieval chord "patterns." Also, songs a often sun by one or two people most often, but carols tend to be sun by a group together, right? Obviously a song a be song by multiple people, but is it common to think of a carol as being sung by one person?
One of the things that makes Christmas such a memorable time of year is the music. The same songs, year after year, get stuck in our heads and we can often recite the words without even thinking about it. Recently, I attended an incredible performance by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, which was dedicated to the music of Christmas.
As we in the audience belted out the nostalgic tune, I read the words on the back of the program, trying to make sure I was singing it all correctly. The further we got into the song, the more I began to get distracted from my singing (which I am sure was a relief to those sitting around me!) as the message of the song began to resonate in my soul.
I watched as everyone proclaimed in perfectly crafted theology the message of the Gospel! As I looked around the concert hall, I wondered if those who were singing had ever given pause to what they were saying.
This time of the year, our entire culture stops what it is doing and is compelled to turn its gaze toward a baby in a manger, a newborn King. The songs that many Americans, Christian or not, have on their lips and in their heads during this season are ripe with the message of the Gospel.
As you sing carols this Christmas, take the time to think about the message of the songs and what they mean. Consider the words you are singing and the truths they proclaim about the Savior you are worshiping.
In the last 20 years, Christian songwriters and worship leaders have caught on to the fact that Christmas is a significant time for worship in the church. More than just Christmas carols, there are so many great worship songs that highlight the themes of Christmas in a style that flows with worship songs we sing all throughout the year. These songs talk about joy, hope and peace in ways that are relevant to our modern lives, just as the classic carols connect us to the rich theology of our history.
I piled a suitcase, a still camera, a video camera and a tape recorder into my sturdy Volvo and headed from my home in North Cape May, New Jersey, to Savannah, Georgia, 13 hours and 760 miles south. My destination was the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, known to just about every Savannan as the Jingle Bells Church.
What a beautiful church, I thought. The stately stone edifice was recently renovated. I tried to imagine Pierpont sitting at the organ, playing his spritely song to the congregants every Christmas Eve.
The man led a complicated life. He moved to the South and fought for the Confederacy, while his brother, John, served as a Union Army chaplain. He died impoverished though his nephew was the great financial titan, J. Pierpont Morgan, said to have more money than the U.S. Treasury.
No one knows for sure the plantation where it was written, and today the Coffin Point Plantation is the only one on the island that remains. At one time it occupied 1,120 acres and housed 63 slaves. I found the three-story manor house, white with red-roof shingles, down a quiet back road, near the sea.
After a full day of travel to All Saints Episcopal Church in Pontiac, Michigan, the source of inspiration for the Alfred Burt family carols, I headed east to Concord, Massachusetts, to visit Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where composer Katherine K. Davis is buried.
The First Parish in Wayland, a Unitarian Universalist church in Wayland, Massachusetts, a scenic town outside of Boston, was my next stop. It was there Edmund Hamilton Sears, author of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, served as minister.
What I love so much about the carol is that Sears wrote it as a prayer for peace more than as a carol. The Mexican War had just ended and the Civil War was on the horizon when he penned it Christmas Eve 1849.
Christmas Eve, 1863, he was grieving over the death of his wife in a home fire, and of his son, who had been wounded in battle. The professor was awake late, in a desperate mood, when he heard the peal of church bells. Christmas had come.
From Cambridge I drove to Philadelphia, to The Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square. I wanted to pay homage to Rev. Phillips Brooks, the rector who wrote the poem O Little Town of Bethlehem, after returning from the Holy Land in 1866.
Christmas had always been a sad day for Berlin. He lost a son Christmas Day 1928, and over time grew increasingly reclusive. In 1983, when he was 95, carolers gathered outside his home and serenaded him with his wonderful song.
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