The Stories Behind Some of the Most Loved Christmas Carols
By Donna Brooks
Each year while I string lights and place ornaments on our tree, I listen to Christmas music. From secular songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to sacred carols like “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” there is nothing that gets me into the holiday spirit more than these Christmas classics.
For centuries, people have celebrated the birth of Jesus with music. The first Christmas carol was written in 125 A.D. by a Roman bishop, who declared, “in the Holy Night of the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour, all shall solemnly sing the Angels Hymn.” But most of the carols we sing today were actually written in the 18th and 19th centuries. Here are some of the stories behind these beloved carols:
“God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”
The composer and the origin of this traditional English carol are unknown. However, it is believed that the song may go back as far as the 1600s. But we can probably give credit to a 19th-century author for making it a well-known carol for us today. In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens displays the cold heart of his miserly protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, as he abruptly turns away a caroler singing “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”:
“The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol; but, at the first sound of
‘God bless you, merry gentleman,
May nothing you dismay!’
“Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog, and even more congenial frost.”
A side note for the grammar nerds reading this: Not only does Dickens’ version differ a little from the one we sing today, but also he puts the comma after “you” instead of after “merry.” Most music historians believe the comma should go after “merry.” Who is right? I don’t know, but there’s a whole lot of internet discussion about the little comma in this carol. Even The New York Times chimed in with a 1971 article about this particular “wandering comma.” But I digress …
“Silent Night”
“Silent Night” is perhaps the most well-loved carol of all. On Christmas Eve of 1818, Joseph Mohr, a young Catholic priest in Oberndorf, Austria, took a poem he wrote and asked his friend Franz Xaver Gruber, a local schoolteacher and organist, to set his words to music. Legend has it that Gruber wrote the melody in just hours, and the two performed it at midnight mass that evening accompanied by guitar because the church organ was broken. Today, the song has been translated into more than 300 languages, and Bing Crosby’s version of the carol is one of the best-selling singles of all time.
“O Come All Ye Faithful”
On Christmas Eve 1914, soldiers fighting on the Western Front in the First World War could not imagine that they would be celebrating Christmas. But when an unexpected and unauthorized truce was formed, soldiers climbed out of their bunkers, laid down their weapons, shook hands, and sang Christmas carols. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade described the scene:
First, the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up “O Come, All Ye Faithful” the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing—two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.
German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch recalled: “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”
“O Little Town of Bethlehem”
This beautiful carol was originally written for children. Phillips Brooks, an American Episcopal priest, was so inspired by his visit to Bethlehem in 1865 that he wrote a poem for the students in his Sunday school class. Brooks described his time in Bethlehem:
I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I knew well, telling each other of the “wonderful night” of the Savior’s birth.
Later, Lewis Redner, the church organist, set the words of Brooks’ poem to music under a pretty tight deadline. He recounted how it all came together:
As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, “Redner, have you ground out that music yet to ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’? I replied, “No,” but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.
Not only did the carol live beyond Christmas of 1868, but it is also still widely sung in churches today and has been covered by secular artists such as Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Mariah Carey and Kenny Chesney.
Donna Brooks is a freelance writer and editor and is the owner of Red Clay Editorial Services in Bluffton, South Carolina. In her free time, she is an avid runner, reader, photographer and traveler.
References
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen, Wikipedia
“A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens
‘Silent Night’ turns 200 this year. Is it the greatest Christmas song ever? America Magazine
Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce of 1914, Time magazine