Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without singing a few carols, but what are the origins of the familiar words and tunes we sing every year? Read on to find out the history of the Christmas Carol and the top ten tunes that churches across the UK will be singing this year.
The Times Online reports that the top 10 carols of the Church of England are:
Church of England are:
O Come All Ye Faithful
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Silent Night
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Once in Royal David’s City
In the Bleak Midwinter
Joy to the World
Away in a Manger
The First Nowell
Angels from the Realms of Glory
The article lists the top 10 for other denominations and gives the history of the carols and some of the myths that surround them:
O Come All Ye Faithful, is popularly thought to have been written by a 13th-century saint. But the crescendoing carol, originally in Latin and entitled Adeste Fidelis, dates instead to 1743. It was written by John Francis Wade, a Roman Catholic who fled France during the Jacobean rebellion and worked as a music teacher in England. The carol was first translated into English in 1789 for use in the Protestant Church. There are almost 50 different English versions, the most well known was translated in 1841 by Frederick Oakeley an Anglican priest who wrote “Ye faithful, approach ye”. But after his conversion to Catholicism in 1845 Oakeley rewrote the opening lines as ‘O come all ye faithful / Joyfully triumphant.
Read it here.
HT to Thinking Anglicans.
What is your favorite?