Christmas music facts for kids

A Christmas minstrel playing pipe and tabor

Christmas music are songs that relate to Christmas and New Year's. The music is normally heard during the holiday season.

Music was an early part of Christmas and its celebrations.

During the Middle Ages, the English people combined circle dances with singing and called them carols. Christmas carols in English first appeared in a 1426 work from John Audelay.

Traditional Christmas carols

Child Christmas carolers in Bucharest, Romania 1929

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), a British composer who helped to popularise many medieval and folk carols for the modern age

Songs which are traditional, even some without a specific religious context, are often called Christmas carols. Each of these has a rich history, some dating back many centuries.

A popular set of traditional carols that might be heard at any Christmas-related event include:

• "Angels We Have Heard on High" (in the UK the text of "Angels from the Realms of Glory" is sung to this tune)
• "Away in a Manger"
• "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 You Merry, Gentlemen" (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen)
• "Good King Wenceslas"
• "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"
• "I Saw Three Ships"
• "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear"
• "Joy to the World"
• "O Christmas Tree" (O Tannenbaum)
• "O Come, All Ye Faithful" (Adeste Fideles)
• "O come, O come, Emmanuel"
• "O Holy Night" (Cantique de Noël)
• "O Little Town of Bethlehem"
• "Once in Royal David's City"
• "Silent Night"
• "The Twelve Days of Christmas"
• "We Three Kings of Orient Are"
• "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"
• "What Child Is This?"
• "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"

Popular Christmas songs

More recently popular Christmas songs—often Christmas songs introduced in theater, television, film, or other entertainment media—tend to be specifically about Christmas, or have a wintertime theme. They are typically not overtly religious. The most popular set of these titles—heard over airwaves, on the Internet, in shopping centers malls, in elevators and lobbies, even on the street during the Christmas season—have been composed and performed from the 1930s onward. "Jingle Bells", "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas", and "Up on the House Top", however, date from the mid-19th century.

The largest portion of these songs in some way describes or is reminiscent of Christmas traditions, how Western Christian countries tend to celebrate the holiday, i.e., with caroling, mistletoe, exchanging of presents, a Christmas tree, feasting, jingle bells, etc. Celebratory or sentimental, and nostalgic in tone, they hearken back to simpler times with memorable holiday practices—expressing the desire either to be with someone or at home for Christmas.

Many titles help define the mythical aspects of modern Christmas celebration: Santa Claus bringing presents, coming down the chimney, being pulled by reindeer, etc. New mythical characters are created, defined, and popularized by these songs; "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", adapted from a major retailer's promotional poem, was introduced to radio audiences by Gene Autry in 1949. His follow-up a year later introduced "Frosty the Snowman", the central character of his song.

Images for kids

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  Christmas music being performed at a US Army Band concert in 2010

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  King's College Chapel, Cambridge (left) in the snow where the Nine Lessons and Carols are broadcast on the BBC and around the world on Christmas Eve

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  The large repertoire of Advent and Christmas church music plays an important role in services

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  Classical concerts are popular at Christmas, such as this performance in a church in Sweden

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  Museum staff singing Christmas carols in the Natural History Museum, London

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  Carol singers in festive costume in Poland

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  Blandfordia nobilis, or Christmas Bells, of eastern Australia

See also

In Spanish: Música navideña para niños