The Story of the WWI Christmas Truce by Mike Dash for Smithsonian magazine.
Posts Tagged ‘Christmas carols’
The Christmas truce of World War One
December 24, 2021Once in Royal David’s City
December 25, 2020This selection is lifted from Lambert Strether’s Christmas Eve 2020 message on Naked Capitalism.
I enjoyed the whole message and the comment thread that followed.
Merry Christmas 2018
December 24, 2018
Merry Christmas 2016
December 24, 2016MERRY CHRISTMAS 2014
December 25, 2014
This is a 14th century Irish carol which tells the story of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary. The lyrics are a Latin version of Chapter One of the Gospel of Luke.
Source: Saturday Chorale
Hat tip to Making Light.
Christmas carols remixed
December 22, 2012
My favorite Christmas carols are the traditional religious carols sung in the traditional way, but this medley is good fun, too.
The beauty of traditional Christmas carols
December 18, 2012The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins prefers the beautiful traditional religious Christmas carols to the 19th century winter songs and the 20th century Santa Claus songs.
“All that ‘Happy Holiday Season’ stuff, with ‘holiday’ cards and ‘holiday’ presents,” is a tiresome import from the United States, where it has long been fostered more by rival religions than atheists,” Mr. Dawkins wrote [in Britain’s New Statesman magazine last year].
As a “cultural Anglican,” Mr. Dawkins continued, “I recoil from such secular carols as ‘White Christmas,’ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the loathsome ‘Jingle Bells,’ but I’m happy to sing real carols, and in the unlikely event that anyone wants me to read a lesson I’ll gladly oblige — only from the King James Version, of course.”
Me, too.
Here are some links to recordings and lyrics of the traditional carols
Syncopated Sleigh Ride
December 19, 2011I still prefer the traditional Christmas carols
December 10, 2011Click on xkcd for the source of this chart.
I know of no popular songs more beautiful than the traditional Christmas carols. It would be a shame if they were crowded out by the modern non-sectarian holiday carols. The modern carols are all right for what they are. They are just not as beautiful at the traditional carols.
Click on The Hymns and Carols of Christmas for a comprehensive list of links to recordings and lyrics of every traditional Christmas song I ever heard of, and many that I haven’t.
Are there any popular songs more beautiful?
December 21, 2010Are there any more beautiful songs, known and sung by almost everyone, than the traditional Christmas carols?