Why we all love a Christmas sing-song

As long as I can remember, Christmas has been said to be “too commercial”. All ‘Buy, Buy, Buy …Pay, Pay Pay’ instead of … Pray, pray, pray?

Few of us these days actually attend church services, even at Christmas. But the many visceral links between Christmas and the past have made us the social beings we are today.

And something of that feeling and reverence I believe still lingers on in Christmas songs. Even for us lapsed church-goers. Given the right song.

While Christians “salute the happy morn when the saviour Jesus Christ was born”, there has always been something joyous about this bleak season in the Northern hemisphere. It was, for our ancestors, a time to have a big blowout before the dark winter months set in.

Christ’s actual birth may have been mid to late September, but the early Church readily adopted 25 December as a natural fit with the Winter Solstice celebrated by pagans.

Solstice celebrations

It is believed these pagans danced and sang around stone circles and later in village greens and town squares. Dancing – as well as singing – was an essential aspect of every solstice celebration, surviving to this day in the springtime village maypole.

And those songs! The word ‘carol’ comes from the old French word ‘carole’, which meant a popular circle dance accompanied by singing. Carols were once written and sung in all four seasons, as part of those solstice gatherings.

Some of the simplest, most moving carols retain their pagan roots. The Sans Day Carol, originally from the Cornish village of Day, is better known today as The Holly and the Ivy:

‘Now the holly bears a berry as white as the milk,
And Mary bore Jesus, who was wrapped up in silk’

Individual trees, to the pagans, had spirits – people hung sacred objects from their branches. Hence we have O Tannebaum (O Christmas Tree), which brings ‘the pagan’ right into our living rooms.

And let’s not forget the feasting. The Boars Head, with its mention of ‘the King of Bliss’, is a part of the Christmas canon. But pagans would be right at home with the sentiment.

Some well-worn classics such as Hark the Herald Angels Sing are OK to belt out at a carol service. But they feel more like a duty. Although another classic, O Come all ye Faithful, is saved by its glorious descant.

O Holy Night feels more of a celebration. ‘Christ was born, O night, O holy night!’ And most of us can identify with the line ‘Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease’.

But back to the party!

And let’s hear Fairytale of New York one more time. A seasonal hit that keeps on giving. It’s certainly profane – you’re unlikely to hear it in church. And yet, it is a tale of enduring love – and redemption – perhaps perversely because of the line ‘you cheap lousy faggot, Merry Christmas you arse, I pray God it’s our last’.

The best seasonal songs raise the spirits. And have just a hint of reverence for the Divine or at least for life itself. I am a member of a community choir in Hastings and over the years we have explored every aspect of Christmas carolling – from the sacred to the popular. Here are some of my favourites to celebrate the solstice …

Top Ten, in no particular order:

Here We Come a Wassailing

Gaudete

Fairytale of New York

Deck the Halls

Ding Dong Merrily on High

Sizalewe Indodana (S Africa)

… and ones I could do without: