If you have grown up in the UK, even if you have never experienced any other form of cathedral music, the chances are you will be familiar with a good number of Christmas carols. Since their beginnings, they have occupied something of a middle ground between the sacred and the profane. Some have their origins in the monastery, others in the ale house. They cross international boundaries with remarkable ease and have been subject to considerable evolution and development. Some are rather cryptic and don’t appear to have much to do with Christmas at all.
Throughout their intriguing history, carols have suffered censorship and courted controversy but have, nonetheless, come to occupy a central and much-loved role in the celebration of Christmas the world over.
The beginnings
The earliest carols (there are about 500 or so) are preserved in manuscripts from the 13th to the 15th centuries. It is highly unlikely that any of these were conceived to be performed in church. Most were probably written to be sung socially alongside Christmas festivities: in the homes of the nobility; while out ‘wassailing’; or even in the local hostelry. Some may have been sung by cathedral musicians between Christmas and Epiphany, when the ‘boy bishop’ and his retinue of choristers and clerks visited local country houses and monasteries, being rewarded with gifts of money.
Many surviving early carols are from English sources, but songs of a similar style appear in manuscripts and early printed volumes from a number of European countries. Once such source is the Swedish collection Piae Cantiones, which contains the song ‘Gaudete’ (made famous by the folk-rock group Steeleye Span in the 1970s) and the melody we now sing to ‘Good King Wenceslas’ (with different words). Another is the Spanish song ‘Ríu ríu chíu’, which, though not officially a ‘carol’, has a Christmas theme and shares the structure and dance-like quality of many northern European carols of the Middle Ages.
Songs for dancing
Medieval carols were not synonymous with Christmas. In fact, around half the extant early carols from England celebrate different religious festivals or have entirely secular texts (one being the ‘Agincourt Carol’, which was adapted by William Walton in his music for Olivier’s film of Shakespeare’s Henry V). Many of these early examples are strophic with a repeating refrain. The verses are often for just one voice with the refrain breaking into parts.
An example of this type of carol is the ‘Boar’s Head Carol’, which seems to have been conceived to accompany the ceremonial presentation of a boar’s head at a Yuletide feast. It was the first English carol ever to appear in print (published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521) and is sung each year in Oxford, at Queen’s College’s Boar’s Head Gaudy. This banquet, according to legend, celebrates a student who saved himself from being gored by a boar by thrusting a volume of Aristotle into its mouth!
Multi-lingual carols
Like a number of medieval carols, the Boar’s Head Carol is ‘macaronic’, meaning that its text is a combination of two or more languages, usually the vernacular of its country of origin and Latin. The beautifully haunting ‘There is no rose’ similarly uses English and Latin. Another commonly sung example of a macaronic carol is ‘In Dulci Jubilo’. This fourteenth-century song came from Germany. In the UK, the German text is often sung in an English translation, but the original Latin is retained.
Angelus ad virginem
Another medieval carol often sung by choirs today is ‘Angelus ad virginem’, probably composed by a 13th-century Franciscan monk, which tells the story of the annunciation. This carol must have been popular in the Middle Ages, as it appears in a number of manuscripts and is even mentioned in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale. Its upbeat melody has stood the test of time and is as enjoyable to sing now as it appears to have been over 700 years ago.
References to holly and ivy first appear in medieval carols, reflecting the tradition of decorating homes in evergreen at Christmastime. Sometimes, but not always, they are afforded Christian symbolism. There is even a carol by Henry VIII on this theme, ‘Green groweth the holly’, found in a manuscript in the British Library.
Although a large number of texts have been preserved, the music has survived for only about one fifth of medieval carols. Many composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have therefore taken the opportunity to set new music to ancient texts. Examples include William Mathias’s ‘Sir Christèmas’ and ‘A babe is born’. Perhaps the best-known collection is Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, which sets nine medieval texts, framed by a Latin plainchant antiphon, ‘Hodie Christus natus est’.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Nevertheless, carol singing took something of a knock during the interregnum after the English Civil War. A Parliamentary Act in 1645 banned the observance of Christmas altogether. This was clearly an unpopular move and satirical pamphlets railed against it. Evidence suggests that the ruling was frequently flouted and, though the carols themselves couldn’t be sung, ballads were composed remembering festive Christmases past.
One carol that did, somehow, ‘slip through the net’ was published during the Civil War by the Royalist poet Robert Herrick in a collection entitled His Noble Numbers: or, His Pious Pieces in 1647. ‘What sweeter musick’ is described as a ‘Christmas Caroll’ sung (presumably some years earlier) ‘to the King in the Presence at White-Hall’. We are further told that the ‘Musicall Part’ was composed by Henry Lawes, although this setting is now lost and it is now best known in a version by John Rutter.
Carolling returned with the Restoration in 1660. Some carols were printed and circulated on broadsheets (like other ‘broadside ballads’) but it is likely that most were transmitted orally from one generation to another, and it was not until many years later that these were written down.
Christmas hymns
In 1700, what we now consider to be a carol (but was then regarded as a hymn) was published in a supplement to Tate and Brady’s New Version of the Psalms of David. ‘While shepherds watched’, by then Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, became, at that time, the only Christmas hymn sanctioned for use in the Church of England and remained so for much of the century.
This was joined in a later edition towards the end of the century, by ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’. ‘Hark the herald’ began life as ‘Hark how all the welkin ring’, penned by the famous Methodist hymnodist Charles Wesley. George Whitefield changed the words because not many people knew what ‘the welkin’ is! It wasn’t paired with the famous tune by Mendelssohn until many years later, so would have sounded quite differently from how we know it today.
The nineteenth-century revival
Their motivation was to preserve the carols that were part of what they feared was a dying oral tradition. In fact, they paved the way for a resurgence of interest and a spawning of many new carols and Christmas hymns. Indeed, many of the songs we think of as traditional Christmas hymns and carols became popular in the nineteenth century.
Carols in worship
Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, were keen to promote the concept of a ‘family Christmas’ and carols, along with the introduction of the Christmas tree (a tradition from Albert’s native Germany) played a big role in this. Carols’ association with church settings grew much stronger, with clergy organising outdoor carol-singing gatherings in cities, towns and villages. The fact that many Victorian homes had a piano or harmonium allowed families to gather round and sing together.
Although some evidence suggests that cathedral choirs did sing carols in the homes of congregants over the Christmas period, during the nineteenth century, carols were gradually introduced into formal worship and the cathedral choir acquired a more significant carol-singing role. John Stainer included carols in Choral Evensong at St Paul’s in 1878 and other cathedrals soon followed suit.
The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
It was reputedly Benson’s intention to provide a service that would tempt locals away from their alcohol-infused revelry in public houses to an attractive religious celebration of Christmas. The neo-gothic Truro Cathedral was still under construction at the time, so the first service was held in a vast wooden shed serving as a temporary cathedral. The service took place at 10pm on Christmas Eve and is said to have been attended by over 400 people.
Benson’s structure is attractively simple. Nine Bible readings, which put the story of Christmas into its theological context (from the fall of man to the birth of Christ), are interspersed by the singing of carols.
The Festival first came to King’s College, Cambridge in 1918. The Dean, Eric Milner-White, had previously served in the First World War as an army chaplain and his experiences led him to the conviction that the Church of England required more imaginative approaches to worship.
The service has been sung annually on Christmas Eve ever since, even in 2020, during the covid pandemic. Millions tune in to the BBC radio broadcast, which has occurred every year but one since 1928. The service famously begins with a solo chorister (chosen at the very last minute) performing the first verse of ‘Once in royal David’s city’ and concludes with ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’.
Thanks to the late Sir Stephen Cleobury, the Festival has spawned a wealth of new music. When he was appointed Director of Music in 1982, Cleobury demonstrated his commitment to contemporary music by commissioning a new carol each year. The first to be commissioned, in 1983, was ‘In Wintertime’ by Lennox Berkeley. Since then composers such as Judith Weir, John Rutter, Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan, Jonathan Dove, Cecilia McDowell and Cheryl Frances-Hoad have contributed carols to the service.
Carols for Choirs
The first volume was edited by Sir David Willcocks (at the time, Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge) and Reginald Jaques, who was the conductor of the Bach Choir. The book proved enormously popular and became OUP’s best-selling title. Volume 2 followed in 1970. A young John Rutter replaced Reginald Jaques (who had recently died) as a co-editor with David Wilcocks. Many further volumes have since been published, with Bob Chilcott, David Blackwell and David Hill joining the editing team.
By including a combination of choral arrangements of traditional Christmas carols and contemporary compositions, the series has done much to curate the choral ‘sound of Christmas’ and introduce singers and audiences alike to a wide range of Christmas music. Of particular note was the inclusion of descants (a part above the main tune, sung by the sopranos or trebles) for carols such as ‘O come all ye faithful’, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ and ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, which have become a popular feature of many carol services and concerts.
Christmas carols today
Everyone can join in with congregational carols and Christmas hymns at carol services and concerts, carol singing in the streets or on village greens or, as is still the case in some parts of the UK, in the pub. The tradition of lusty ‘pub carol singing’ is particularly strong in towns and villages in and around Sheffield, lasting from the first Sunday after Remembrance Day till into the New Year. It is somewhat ironic that the first carol permitted within worship has now become the mainstay of the pub carolling tradition, with ‘While shepherds watched’ being sung to a huge variety of different melodies, sometimes several times in one evening.
Choral arrangements of traditional carols and the composition of new carols have cemented choirs’ unique and important contribution to the music that accompanies Christmas. For many, the sight and sound of choristers singing carols by candlelight epitomises the cathedral choir. The balance between the traditional and the new, the sheer versatility of the medium and its accessibility to all has placed carol singing at the heart of Christmas celebrations, and will surely keep it there for many generations to come.
Find out more
Want to read more? Explore our timeline of Christmas carols, with audio examples, and track the development of the genre over the centuries.