“Carol of the bells” has always been my favorite “Christmas Carol”, but I’m not Christian. My girlfriend went off on a little project to find a few different versions of the song for me to have through the “season” on my ipod. Low and behold, we both learned for the first time that the song as it was popularized in the US was actually new lyrics thrown onto a traditional Ukranian song (Shchedryk ) celebrating the New Year and the coming of spring that had nothing at all to do with religion.
Learning this has made me very happy, even if it has oft been previously discussed already on the Dope.