After years of resisting, I have broken down and picked up a Christmas carol book to play on the piano. The years of resistance is largely due to my relative inability to play the piano well, but I've been practicing a lot lately, and so can now play some easy arrangements well enough. I was playing through some tunes and got to thinking, when and where were the first carols sung or played?
It is probably worth mentioning that Christmas is built around a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice and that Jesus was probably born sometime in the spring. Because the Christian religion appropriated the solstice holiday, the first Christmastime hymn with a Christian focus appeared in 4th century Rome. The hymns were in the traditional Latin and were basically theological doctrines. A Parisian monk named Adam of St. Victor began to derive music from popular songs in the 12th century, and these are a little closer to the modern Christmas carol.
"Wassailing" was a tradition that began with songs that were meant to be sung by groups of people (and also probably has some pagan background; wassail is an Anglo-Saxon toast for "be thou hale" or "be in good health.") The group of singers would go from home to home singing carols.
The "golden age" of caroling is believed to have been between the 15th and 16th century in England, and the word carol is of medieval origin that meant a dance song or circle song with singing. Most of these songs had a verse and refrain form. Remarkably, caroling fell out of fashion for about 200 years, experiencing a revival of sorts in the 18th century, where most of the carols we know today come from.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too!
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