Christmas music
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or in the case of carols, may employ lyrics about the nativity of Jesus Christ, traditions such as gift-giving and merrymaking, cultural figures such as Santa Claus, or other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons.
Traditional Christmas carols include pieces such as "Silent Night", "O Holy Night", "Down in Yon Forest", "O Come, All Ye Faithful" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". While most Christmas songs before the 20th century were of a traditional religious character and reflected the Nativity story of Christmas, the Great Depression brought a stream of widely popular songs of U.S. origin that did not explicitly mention the Christian nature of the holiday, but rather the more cultural themes and customs associated with it. These included songs aimed at children such as "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", as well as sentimental ballad-type songs performed by famous crooners of the era, such as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "Blue Christmas" and "White Christmas", the latter of which remained the best-selling single of all time as of 2024. Elvis' Christmas Album by Elvis Presley is the best-selling Christmas album of all time, having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Performances of Christmas music at public concerts, in churches, at shopping malls, on city streets, and in private gatherings are a staple of the Christmas season in many cultures across the world. Many radio stations convert to a 24/7 Christmas music format leading up to the holiday, though the standard for most stations in the US is on or near Veterans Day, some stations adopt the format as early as the day after Halloween as part of a phenomenon known as "Christmas creep". Liturgically, Christmas music traditionally ceases to be performed at the arrival of Candlemas, the traditional end of the Christmas-Epiphanytide season.
History
Early music
Music associated with Christmas is thought to have its origins in 4th-century Rome, in Latin-language hymns such as Veni redemptor gentium. By the 13th century, under the influence of Francis of Assisi, the tradition of popular Christmas songs in regional native languages developed. Christmas carols in the English language first appear in a 1426 work of John Awdlay, an English chaplain, who lists twenty five "caroles of Cristemas", probably sung by groups of wassailers who would travel from house to house. In the 16th and 17th century, various Christmas carols still sung to this day, including "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "Ríu Ríu Chíu", first emerged.Music was an early feature of the Christmas season and its celebrations. The earliest examples are hymnographic works intended for liturgical use in observance of both the Feast of the Nativity and Theophany, many of which are still in use by the Eastern Orthodox Church. The 13th century saw the rise of the carol written in the vernacular, under the influence of Francis of Assisi.
In the Middle Ages, the English combined circle dances with singing and called them carols. Later, the word carol came to mean a song in which a religious topic is treated in a style that is familiar or festive. From Italy, it passed to France and Germany, and later to England. Christmas carols in English first appear in a 1426 work of John Audelay, a Shropshire priest and poet, who lists 25 "caroles of Cristemas", probably sung by groups of wassailers, who went from house to house. Music in itself soon became one of the greatest tributes to Christmas, and Christmas music includes some of the noblest compositions of the great musicians. Martin Luther, the father of Lutheran Christianity, encouraged congregational singing during the Mass, in addition to spreading the practice of caroling outside the liturgy.
Puritan prohibition
During the Commonwealth of England government under Cromwell, the Rump Parliament prohibited the practice of singing Christmas carols as Pagan and sinful. Like other customs associated with Christianity of the Catholic and Magisterial Protestant traditions, it earned the disapproval of Puritans. Famously, Cromwell's interregnum prohibited all celebrations of the Christmas holiday. This attempt to ban the public celebration of Christmas can also be seen in the early history of Father Christmas.The Puritan Westminster Assembly of Divines established Sunday as the only holy day in the liturgical calendar in 1644. The new liturgy produced for the English church recognized this in 1645, and so legally abolished Christmas. Its celebration was declared an offense by Parliament in 1647. There is some debate as to the effectiveness of this ban, and whether or not it was enforced in the country. During the years that the Puritan ban on Christmas was in place in England, semi-clandestine religious services marking Christ's birth continued to be held, and people sang carols in secret.
Puritans generally disapproved of the celebration of Christmas—a trend that continually resurfaced in Europe and the US through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Royal restoration
When in May 1660 Charles II restored the Stuarts to the throne, the people of England once again practiced the public singing of Christmas carols as part of the revival of Christmas customs, sanctioned by the king's own celebrations.The Victorian Era saw a surge of Christmas carols associated with a renewed admiration of the holiday, including "Silent Night", "O Little Town of Bethlehem", and "O Holy Night". The first Christmas songs associated with Saint Nicholas or other gift-bringers also came during 19th century, including "Up on the Housetop" and "Jolly Old St. Nicholas". Many older Christmas hymns were also translated or had lyrics added to them during this period, particularly in 1871 when John Stainer published a widely influential collection entitled "Christmas Carols New & Old". William Sandys's Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, contained the first appearance in print of many now-classic English carols, and contributed to the mid-Victorian revival of the holiday. Singing carols in church was instituted on Christmas Eve 1880 in Truro Cathedral, Cornwall, England, which is now seen in churches all over the world.
According to one of the only observational research studies of Christmas caroling, Christmas observance and caroling traditions vary considerably between nations in the 21st century, while the actual sources and meanings of even high-profile songs are commonly misattributed, and the motivations for carol singing can in some settings be as much associated with family tradition and national cultural heritage as with religious beliefs. Christmas festivities, including music, are also celebrated in a more secular fashion by such institutions as the Santa Claus Village, in Rovaniemi, Finland.
Alms
The tradition of singing Christmas carols in return for alms or charity began in England in the seventeenth century after the Restoration. Town musicians or 'waits' were licensed to collect money in the streets in the weeks preceding Christmas, the custom spread throughout the population by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up to the present day. Also from the seventeenth century, there was the English custom, predominantly involving women, of taking a wassail bowl to their neighbors to solicit gifts, accompanied by carols. Despite this long history, many Christmas carols date only from the nineteenth century onwards, with the exception of songs such as the "Wexford Carol", "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "As I Sat on a Sunny Bank", "The Holly and the Ivy", the "Coventry Carol" and "I Saw Three Ships". The practice of ordinary Christian church members of various denominations going door to door and singing carols continues in many parts of the world, such as in India; residents give money to the carolers, which churches distribute to the poor.Church feasts
The importance of Advent and the feast of Christmastide within the church year means there is a large repertoire of music specially composed for performance in church services celebrating the Christmas story. Various composers from the Baroque era to the 21st century have written Christmas cantatas and motets. Some notable compositions include:- Thomas Tallis: Mass "Puer natus est nobis"
- Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: O magnum mysterium
- Orlande de Lassus: Resonet in laudibus
- Heinrich Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie
- Johann Sebastian Bach: several cantatas for Christmas to Epiphany and Christmas Oratorio
- Jakub Jan Ryba: Czech Christmas Mass "Hey, Master!"
- Anton Bruckner: ''Virga Jesse floruit''
Classical music
Other classical works associated with Christmas include:
- Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 9 vocal settings and 2 instrumental settings:
- * Messe de Minuit H.9 for soloists, choir, flûtes, strings and bc
- * In nativitatem Domini canticum H.314 for 4 voices, 2 flutes, 2 violins and bc
- * Canticum in nativitatem Domini H.393 for 3 voies, 2 treble instruments and bc
- * Pastorale de Noël H.414 for soloists, choir, 2 treble instruments and bc
- * Oratorio de Noël H.416 for soloists, choir, flutes, strings and bc
- * Dialogus inter angelos et pastores Judae in nativitatem Domini H.420 for soloists, choir, flutes, strings and bc
- * In nativitate Domini Nostri Jesu Christi canticum H.421 for 3 voices and bc
- * Pastorale de Noël H.482 for soloists, choir, 2 treble viols and bc
- * Pastorale de Noël H.483 H.483 a H.483 b for soloists, choir, 2 flutes, 2 treble viols and bc
- * Noël pour les instruments H.531 for flutes, strings and bc
- * Noël sur les instruments H.534 for flutes, strings and bc
- Christus an unfinished oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn
- L'enfance du Christ by Hector Berlioz
- Oratorio de Noël by Camille Saint-Saëns
- The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Hodie, both by Ralph Vaughan Williams
- A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten.