Well, it’s that time of year again. The leaves have fallen, there’s a chill in the air, retail stores are suddenly indoor winter wonderlands with cheerful tunes and carols streaming from their sound systems. It is around this time that we start to see an interesting divide among holiday revellers. A divide between those who love Christmas music, and those who can’t stand it (if you’ve ever worked in retail, you’re probably part of the latter group). But regardless of whether you’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or even atheist, or your true feelings on the subject of the holiday season and the fanciful tunes that come with it, there is no denying that music has gone hand-in-hand with the Christmas season for centuries, all over the globe.

Music is so intertwined with the Christmas season that carols actually pre-date the celebration they are most known for. The first carols were sung thousands of years ago, before even “the reason for the season,” as pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice by dancing around giant circles of stones (like Stonehenge) and blazing fires. The word “carol” used to mean simply to dance to something, and they were written and sung for all four seasons. However, as mankind’s Solstice celebrations waned, and Christmas became the major year-end holiday, the tradition of carolling persevered.

As early Christians traded the old pagan celebration for the new Christmas holiday, they needed new Christian songs to sing. It wasn’t until 129 AD, when a Roman Bishop approved a song called “Angel’s Hymn” for Christmas services in Rome, that the first real Christmas song was born. It took a few more centuries, not until after 760 AD in fact, but the practice of writing hymns for Christmas mass or service became more popular across all of Europe. These were still so different from the Christmas carols and seasonal pop music we have today that you’re average modern human probably wouldn’t recognize them as carols. First of all, these songs were not sung at home, or outside, or at parties. These songs were strictly for Christian religious ceremonies. Secondly, every single example of the carols from this time was written and performed in Latin, a language that was falling into disuse even then. Because the Church was really the only entity left that used Latin, the average citizen at the time couldn’t really enjoy this music because they wouldn’t have been able to understand it. The popularity of Christmas music wasn’t particularly high on the Church’s list of priorities, however, as by the Middle Ages (about 1200 AD) most people had lost interest in celebrating Christmas anyway. There were more pressing matters on the minds of the common people during a period of time also known as “The Dark Ages.”

All that changed when an Italian man named Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, from a small town called Assisi, started putting on his Nativity Plays in Italy. The man, more commonly called Francesco at the time (and now canonized as St. Francis of Assisi), began these plays in 1224, and they always featured the actors playing and singing song, called “canticles,” that helped tell and progress the story. As these plays were still connected to the Church the chorus was sometimes in Latin, however they were usually sung in the common language of the audience! These plays may have started in Italy, but they quickly spread to France, Spain, Germany, and the rest of Europe. Although we are aware of these earliest of Christmas carols, the oldest that we have any actual surviving fragments of come from nearly 200 years after St. Francis began his Nativity Plays. Written in 1410, this carol featured a fictional story about Mary and Jesus meeting people throughout Bethlehem. This was extrememly common of carols from this time, and the Elizabethan period that came later; untrue stories about the holy family, based extremely loosely on the Christmas story. Most average people found these songs to be much more charming and entertaining than the religious songs sung during services (similar to many attitudes today). As these songs become more popular and commonplace, they were sung at home, and traveling performers started bringing the songs with them on their travels, changing the words and languages for the local people they visited.

However, like with the onset of the Middle Ages, the mid 1600s saw another halt of Christmas celebrations and carol singing when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans rose to power in England. Nevertheless, despite the oppressive regime, the practice of singing carols survived in private and secret. Carols remained mostly outside the public eye until the Victorian era (about 1840 to 1901) when William Sandys and Devis Gilbert collected as much of the old Christmas music as they could from villages all around England. It was around this time that orchestras and chiors were being set up in cities around England. People wanted Christmas song to sing, so carols once again came back into the popular culture of the time. Thus, the Victorian period saw a rise in many new carols being written, many of which are still somewhat popular today, such as “Good King Wenceslas,” and “I Saw Three Ships.” With new carols, and Christmas more popular, open, and exciting than it had been in centuries, the custom of singing carols in the streets exploded in popularity. A popularity it still enjoys today.

Mankind has been singing songs about this season since pre-history, with the oldest of carols meant to praise the Sun eons before anyone had ever heard of Christmas. The tradition has adapted and evolved over countless millennium. It has endured through plague, oppressive regimes, religious presecution, and even popular opinion to become the timehonoured custom we still gleefully take part in today.

With this brief look at the ancient history of the intimite connection between Christmas and music complete, I hope you can better understand the place music has played throughout the history of Christmas. It has brought people together, both in public and in private, to celebrate their faith. Next week we’ll continue this look at Christmas music as we bring our discussion into the 20th and 21st centuries. We will look at both the modern religious practices of caroling and singing during Christmas services, as well as the massive influx of Christmas themed popular music we consume every year.