Carol Singing
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Carols
were first sung in Europe thousands of years ago, but
these were not Christmas Carols. They were pagan songs,
sung at the Winter Solstice celebrations as people danced
around stone circles. The Winter Solstice is the shortest
day of the year, usually taking place around the 22nd
of December. The word Carol actually means dance or a
song of praise and joy. Carols used to be written and
sung during all four seasons, but only the tradition
of singing them at Christmas has survived.
Early
Christians took over the pagan solstice celebrations
for Christmas and gave people Christian songs to sing
instead
of pagan ones. Many composers all over Europe started to
write carols. Not many people liked them as they were all
written and sung in Latin, a language that the normal people
didn't understand. By the time of the Middles Ages, in
the 1200’s, most people had lost interest in celebrating
Christmas altogether.
In
1223, St. Francis of Assisi started nativity plays in
Italy. The people in the plays sang songs that told the
story during the plays. Sometimes the choruses of these
new carols
were in Latin but, normally, they were all in a language
that the people watching the play could understand.
The
earliest carol was written in 1410 but only a very small
fragment of it still exists. The carol was about
Mary and
Jesus meeting different people in Bethlehem. Most carols
from this era and the Elizabethan period are untrue
stories, loosely based on the Christmas story, and were
seen as
entertaining rather than religious songs. They were
usually sung in homes
rather than in churches. Traveling singers and minstrels
started singing these carols and the words were changed
for the local people wherever they were traveling.
When
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England
in 1647, the celebration of Christmas and
singing
carols
was stopped. However, people still sang them in secret
until Victorian times, when two men called William
Sandys and Davis
Gilbert collected a lot of old Christmas music from
villages throughout England.
Before
carol singing in public became popular, there were sometimes
official carol singers called 'Waits'.
These
were bands of people led by important local leaders
who had the
only power in the towns and villages to take money
from the public. If others did this, they were
sometimes charged
as
beggars. The 'Waits' only sang on Christmas Eve.
This was sometimes known as 'watchnight' or 'waitnight'
because of the shepherds who were watching their
sheep
when the
angels
appeared to them. Also, at this time, many orchestras
and
choirs were being set up in the cities of England
and people wanted Christmas songs to sing, so carols
once
again became
popular.
Many
new carols, such as 'Good King Wenceslas', were written.
New carol services were created and
became
popular, as
did the custom of singing carols in the streets.
Both of these
customs are still popular today. One of the most
popular types of Christmas customs are Carols
by Candlelight
services, when the church is only lit by candlelight.
Carols by Candlelight
services are held in countries all over the world.
Perhaps
the most famous carol service is the service of Nine
Lessons and Carols from King's
College
in Cambridge, England.
This service takes place on Christmas Eve and
is broadcast live on BBC Radio and all over
the world.
The Service
was
first performed in 1918 as a way of the college
celebrating the end of World War I. It is always
started with
a single choir boy singing a solo of the first
verse of the carol
'Once in Royal David's City'. A service of
Nine Lessons and Carols, has nine bible readings that
tell the
Christmas
story
with one or two carols between each lesson.
Caroling
is still popular worldwide. In my rural town, groups
from the different churches
stroll
about the
neighborhoods on Christmas eve, usually collecting
tip money for charity.
Another annual event is the Christmas concert,
with the choirs
from all the area churches joining together
for a very moving and inspirational performance.
