Where Do Christmas Carols Come From?

One of the happiest customs of the Christmas celebration throughout the world is the singing of carols. For us in the United States it would be hard to imagine the holiday without the music that fills the air around us - the old, beloved music. Often it is a strain of melody that starts the season for us, before the other evidences have arrived. We hear the joyous music in our homes and in the shops and on the streets, and these are the songs we sing in soft harmony in our churches throughout the Yuletide season.

The carols that we have known and loved since childhood are part of the tradition, also, of many other countries around the world. Some of our most popular carols were written so far away and so long ago that their origins arc lost in history; some are even songs of pagan origin which were adopted by early Christians and given new words.

Some were folk songs, with secular words, or shepherds' songs or lullabies. Their melodies were so easy to sing, so familiar perhaps, that long ago jubilant Christmas words were set to them. And there are other carols which are quite modern, written in recent years by Americans and set to music written in America.

Several countries have claimed to be the birthplace of caroling, but actually all that is known is that music in honor of the birth of Jesus has been part of church festivals from the very beginning of the Christian era. The word carol was associated with dancing until the fourteenth century, and is derived from the Italian carolare, a medieval ring dance accompanied by singing. Each country has developed its own ways with carols and caroling.
Probably the reason that carol-singing is done in the streets lies in the fact that early carols were not thought to be reverent enough for the inside of a church. Some of the carols seemed to emphasize the delights of the season and overlook its holy meanings, and others were set to gayer music than was thought appropriate; so, today, a group of carolers in a snowy village square on Christmas Eve has a long, long history of outdoor singing.
In England, groups of singers called "waits" continue even now with the ancient custom of making the rounds on Christmas Eve, singing outside doors and windows, and receiving gifts of goods and money from the serenaded householders.

In Wales, the carolers make their rounds at dawn on Christmas morning, and families wake from sleep to ask them in for refreshments. In France the carols are known as "noels" and are sung in the streets of cities as well as villages, and in Italy shepherds walk from house to house in the countryside singing carols to the accompaniment of bagpipes.

In Hungary and Poland carolers visit their neighbors carrying a huge lighted star, the Star of Bethlehem. This form of caroling, known as "star-singing," exists in Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Holland, and Italy. Sweden's carol singers, for this reason, were known as "star-boys." They dressed in costumes to represent the Three Kings and Herod. It is pleasant to think that today, when we sing by flashlight or electric lantern, we are modern "star-singers."

Caroling was very popular in Czechoslovakia, where the boys dressed in the costumes of the Three Kings and carried a crèche, or Jeslicky. Processions of singers still intone the Kolyada songs in Russia, and in Rumania, where the Star of Bethlehem is decorated with frills and bells, carolers go from house to house, carrying on a pole a five-sided box with paper front and back on which there is a picture of the Virgin or some other religious subject, illuminated by a candle within.

So, in one form or another - certainly in the melodies and words of some of the carols themselves - similar caroling customs have spread to many parts of the world.

Carols, like so many other of the heart-warming traditions of Christmas, are enjoyed by so many people in so many places that they help to bring the nations of the earth closer together.