Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music normally performed or heard around the Christmas season, which tends to begin in the months leading up the actual holiday and end in the weeks shortly thereafter.
History
Music was an early feature of the Christmas season and its celebrations. The earliest chants, litanies, and hymns were Latin works intended for use during the church liturgy, rather than popular songs. The 13th century saw the rise of the carol written in the vernacular under the influence of Francis of Assisi.
The word carol comes from the Greek word choraulein , meaning a circle dance performed to flute music. 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. 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.
During the British Commonwealth government under Cromwell, the British Parliament prohibited the practice of singing Christmas carols as pagan and sinful. Like other customs associated with popular catholic Christianity, it earned the disapproval of Protestant 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 Westminster Assembly of Divines established Sunday as the only holy day in the calendar in 1644. The new liturgy produced for the English church recognised this in 1645 and so legally abolished Christmas. Its celebration was declared an offence 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.
Puritans generally disapproved of the celebration of Christmas — a trend which has continually resurfaced in Europe and the USA through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When in May 1660 Charles II restored the Stuarts to the throne, the people of England once again practised the public singing of Christmas carols as part of the revival of Christmas customs, sanctioned by the king's own celebrations.
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 custom predominantly involving women, taking a 'wassail bowl' round their neighbours to solicit gifts, accompanied by carols. Despite this long history, almost all surviving Christmas carols date only from the nineteenth century onwards, with the exception of some traditional folk songs like 'God Rest You Merry Gentlemen', 'As I Sat on a Sunny Bank' and 'The Holly and the Ivy'.
The music of Christmas has always been a combination of sacred and secular, a trend which is also visible in the music composed in the twentieth century, in particular in popular music. In the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, the annual competition to be the Christmas number one single led to the production of music which still provides the mainstay of festive playlists.
The status of Christmas as an important feast within the church year also means there is a long tradition of music specially composed for celebrating the season. The following is a brief and non-exhaustive list of notable compositions:
- Thomas Tallis: Mass Puer natus est nobis (1554)
- Heinrich Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie (1664)
- Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Pastorale sur la naissance de N.S. Jésus-Christ (c. 1670)
- Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio (1734)
- Jakub Jan Ryba: Czech Christmas Mass "Hey, Master!" (1796)
- Various 18th century composers such as Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Torelli & others: Christmas Concertos (for performance on Christmas Eve)
- Hector Berlioz: L'enfance du Christ (1853–4)
- Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols (1942)
Handel's Messiah has become inextricably linked with the Christmas season, especially in England. This is in part due to the efforts of amateur choral societies during the nineteenth century. When it was originally composed, it was performed during Passiontide.
'Christmas creep'
In the United States the playing of Christmas music had generally begun after the Thanksgiving holidays, at which point Christmas decorations in stores and on streets would also appear, but in recent decades the music and related decor have been appearing increasingly early. This tendency for the length of the Christmas season to grow is referred to as 'Christmas creep'. Given the importance of the seasonal gift-giving to the U.S. economy, one driven largely by consumer spending, and with the music industry making at least 40 percent of its annual revenue in the fourth quarter culminating at Christmas, demands for increased revenues motivates the shift. Christmas music best serenades these shopping months, injecting the Christmas spirit and putting shoppers into the proper mood for buying gifts.
Radio stations—responsible for so much of Christmas music broadcasting, popularization, and appreciation—are "going Christmas earlier and earlier", even the day after Halloween, because executives "think that listeners will stick with the first station to change to a seasonal theme." About 400 radio stations "across the United States play(ing) Christmas music around the clock." In Chicago, WLIT saw its share of all radio listeners grow from a 2.9/3.6 share earlier in the year to 9.3 during the Nov. 28 to Dec. 11, 2003 Arbitron rating period. A 2002 Arbitron ratings study confirmed holiday-music surges at stations around the country.
Traditional Christmas carols
Songs which are traditional, even some without a specific religious context, are often called Christmas carols. A more or less standard set of these traditional carols might include such titles as:
- "Away In a Manger"
- "Coventry Carol"
- "Deck the Halls" (Deck the Hall)
- "Ding Dong Merrily on High"
- "The First Nowell" (The First Noël)
- "Go Tell It on the Mountain"
- "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"
- "Good King Wenceslas"
- "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!"
- "Here We Come A-Wassailing"
- "The Holly and the Ivy"
- "I Saw Three Ships"
- "I Wonder as I Wander"
- "In the Bleak Midwinter"
- "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear"
- "Joy to the World"
- "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming"
- "O Come All Ye Faithful ( Adeste Fideles )"
- "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"
- "O Holy Night ( Cantique de Noel )"
- "O Little Town of Bethlehem"
- "Once in Royal David's City"
- "Silent Night"
- "Sussex Carol (On Christmas Night)"
- "The Twelve Days of Christmas"
- "We Three Kings of Orient Are"
- "We Wish You a Merry George"
- "Wexford Carol"
- "What Child Is This"
- "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"
Each of these has a rich history, some dating back many centuries.
Popular Christmas songs
More recently popular Christmas songs, often introduced through film or other entertainment medium, are specifically about Christmas, but are typically not overtly religious and therefore do not qualify as Christmas carols. The archetypal example is 1942’s “White Christmas”, although many other holiday songs have become perennial favorites in the United States, such as Gene Autry’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.
ASCAP's most-performed 'holiday' songs
According to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the following are the Top 25 most-performed “Holiday” songs written by ASCAP members for the first five years of the 21st century. The list does not include songs out of copyright (like "Jingle Bells") or written by members of Broadcast Music, Incorporated, known as BMI.:
- "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) — Mel Tormé, Robert Wells
- "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" — Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie
- "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" — Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin
- "Winter Wonderland" - Felix Bernard, Richard B. Smith
- "White Christmas" — Irving Berlin
- "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" — Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne
- "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" — Johnny Marks
- "Jingle Bell Rock" — Joseph Carleton Beal, James Ross Boothe
- "I'll Be Home for Christmas" — Walter Kent, Kim Gannon, Buck Ram
- "Little Drummer Boy" — Katherine K. Davis, Henry V. Onorati, Harry Simeone
- "Sleigh Ride" — Leroy Anderson, Mitchell Parish
- "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" — Edward Pola, George Wyle
- "Silver Bells" — Jay Livingston
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