Carol*

The holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood,

The holly wears the crown.
“The Holly and The Ivy”, traditional British Carol


From the end of October, until the first of January, you can’t walk into a store or a public place without being inundated with “Christmas Music”. Its quite often modern music (written in the 20th or 21st Century) and almost always badly played. It reverberates in our ears, the tinny dissonance of midi recordings or “Smooth Jazz” renditions and we are so overwhelmed by it that we are forced to tune it out just to survive.

I dearly love Christmas music. It has always been the ultimate expression of the season, songs that are put up as a shield against the darkness of the winter, a cry for the return of Light. I sang them as a child and listened to them on the radio and the record player until my parents thought that they would murder me. By the time I was 12 I had memorized all the verses of all the really popular ones (both modern and traditional) and begun to try and dig up more obscure ones. Then, in my early 20s, I did a spate of working in retail. It almost killed my love of Christmas Carols forever.

The traditional music of the season became background noise to be ignored. It lost its beauty and power. I no longer wanted to sing or even listen to anything connected to the holiday season, in large part because I had to listen to the awful renditions that were piped into the store, hour after hour.

Today, I have reclaimed my love of carols. I find I have little time for more modern songs of the season, but give me “Ther Is No Ros” or “Silent Night” or “The Gower Wassail” and I’m a happy person. And after many years in the Historical Dance community, I’ve found delight in dancing to a few carols as well**. I sang my baby son to sleep with the Coventry Carol and the Christ Child’s Lullaby. I own dozens of Christmas albums and take them out at the holidays to enjoy the music they provide.

How did I recapture that love? To start off, I stopped listening to holiday music at any other time but the holidays. I don’t take out my Christmas albums until the 1st of December and I retire them on the 1st of January. Second, I got picky about the arrangements I choose. I listen to things before I buy and I choose music that I know I’ll like. Since my interests lie in Early Music and Celtic Music, that’s the direction I look in. I tend to stay away from more modern Holiday tunes and performers unless I have a good reason (ie I bought Sting’s holiday album, but I knew about 30% of what was on it and I trusted for the rest, given his current interest in Early Music and my knowledge of the other performers listed). I don’t listen to the radio during the holidays. Its all pop Holiday music and it bores me to tears. I pick music I like to sing and I definitely sing along at every opportunity. That wasn’t something I was allowed to do when working retail. And I incorporate the music into our holiday traditions. We watch the Nutcracker on the evening of the 23rd, we listen to the Messiah on Christmas afternoon. When we trim the tree we listen to Revels CDs, when we drive to Cleveland to see friends over New Years, we most often have the Dr. Demento Holiday CD on, etc.

This year, getting into the holiday season has been particularly difficult. Our family has hit some tough financial times, making celebrating tougher than usual. We will make it through, but it means cutting back on things we love and making do with much, much less. But having holiday music is helping. And I’m hoping by the time the Solstice rolls around, I’ll be out of my blue funk and ready to do ritual, trim the tree and be festive.

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I’m going to put a plug in at this point. If you are interested in Winter Holiday music and traditions, I cannot recommend the recordings by the various Revels organizations enough. Their website has recordings and song books for sale as well as contacts for the various Revels groups across the country. I haven’t been to a show in a decade but I still remember the ones I attended with great love. These organizations have gone a long way towards bringing back my love of the season and reconnecting current Christmas traditions with their pre-Christian roots.





*A carol is defined as a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship.

**Carols were originally dances with words sung in complement. None of the dance done in the Medieval period survive, but several 18th and 19th century carol and hymn writers used dance tunes (extant dances) for their carols. The best examples of this are “Ding Dong Merrily on High” that uses the tune of “Le Branle de l’Offical” from the 1500s and “Masters in This Hall” that used a tune by French composer Marin Marais (1656-1728) to which the English Country Dance “Female Saylor” is also set.