Get dressed ye Merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!
For it is Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas Day!
No thank you.
- Silent Night
- O Holy Night
- The Little Drummer Boy
For actual carols, I always like Once In Royal David’s City.
I think this is the best version of Once in Royal David’s City I’ve seen.
To me real carols means the annual Christmas Eve carol service from King’s College, Cambridge. Non-commercialised, non-Americanised, no Christmas trees, no decorations, no songs about Santa, no pop versions. The gentleness and sweetness and exceptional musical skill of the choir, founded in 1441, and the magnificent setting of the Henry VI’s chapel.
Here’s the best version of In the Bleak Midwinter from King’s. And the best version of O Holy Night.
And a promotional video of I saw Three Ships for their latest CD of carols.
The Shepherd’s Carol,* Gabriel’s Message* and the Sussex Carol are also high on my list.
I had no idea! Thanks for sharing that.
TSO’s Christmas CD’s (Christmas Eve and Other Stories and The Ghosts of Christmas Eve especially) are my favorite Christmas albums, bar none.
I’d say more Moody Blues - a full orchestra fronted by a rock band.
They also did the other version of In the Bleak Midwinter two years later (the Holst version). I find the contrast interesting.
Same here but in the reversed order. This old Jew loves her some Christmas carols.
Il est né, le divin Enfant is by far my favorite Christmas carol. This version I’m particularly partial to.
I love Carols from King’s.
And I agree - I love other christmas music as well, but for carols I prefer the classics.
This has to be the only message board that can turn a thread about Christmas carols into a trainwreck. Next up: “Fuck those puppies and their cute antics!”
Apropos of nothing: my mother liked to supply her own words to popular songs, to wit:
"Children roasting on an open fire,
“Jack Frost nipping at their toes.”
Is it any wonder I turned out like I did?
You keep missing the point. I said that by definition they are not carols. But in general usage, they are. Jingle Bells is not a carol, and yet carolers sing it. The vast majority of people would say that Jingle Bells, Frosty The Snowman and the like are carols.
Silent Night.
I have a collection of thousands of Christmas songs and sheet music, but it’s still Stille Nacht for me.
One of the last gifts my dad gave me was:
Raindrops on snowflakes
and nipples on kittens
I really like “I Saw Three Ships” as sung by the Robert Shaw Chorale and arranged by Alice Parker (and maybe Shaw). I Saw Three Ships: Robert Shaw Chorale (with lyrics) - YouTube
“Jesus, good above all other”. My finding this one especially affecting stems from hearing on radio long ago, a memoir extract in translation, originating from a Russian participant in World War II. The guy mentioned Christmas 1942, outside Stalingrad; and he and his fellow-soldiers hearing the Germans on the other side of the line, singing their language’s carol, to that very poignant tune – appropriate recording of a couple of verses’ worth, was played. Went on to reflect that he and pals were moved by hearing what they did – enmity re the other side, briefly eclipsed; and the memoirist told of a common feeling among “him-and-pals” that in their Soviet-brought-up atheism, they were perhaps missing out on an elusive “something”, which older generations in Russia had been in touch with.
This anecdote, just a person telling of a brief gut-reaction experience – not a matter of anyone trying to convert anyone to Christianity; I found it extremely moving, and from then on, have strongly associated that tune with it.