It’s Christmas Eve and the last Sunday of Advent – and so, here we come a-wassailing! We celebrate the birth of Christ tomorrow, and today the Willows Academy choir helps us get into the festive spirit! But what in the world is wassailing? Firstly, it’s a word borrowed from Norse, ves heill, meaning “be in […]Read more

Good news travels like wildfire – and for “Sussex Carol”, it seems carols travel just as fast! Luke Wadding, an Irish Franciscan friar and historian, is credited with its lyrics in a 1684 work called “Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs.” The lyrics and tune as we sing them today come from Cecil Sharp […]Read more

Like many of the Carols of Comfort & Joy we’ve explored this Advent, “Go Tell it on the Mountain” is a Christmas AND an Easter song. This song likely dates back to the pre-Civil War era and finds its roots in African-American spirituals as part of oral tradition. The lyrics reference the Gospel of Luke’s […]Read more

Have you heard this one before? It’s not like “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” or “Jingle Bells”, with lyrics that are quick to pick up. In fact, it was originally in German!  “Es Ist ein Ros entsprungen” – that’s “A Rose has Sprung up” in English – was first found in print in 1599 in the […]Read more

Today’s Carol of Comfort & Joy is often called “Luther’s cradle hymn” after appearing in a Lutheran children’s hymnal in 1885. While not actually where it came from, the name stuck for “Away in a Manger” and still appears like that in writing today. The three-stanza song comes from Appalachia, with the original two stanzas […]Read more

As you’re traveling to see friends and family for Christmas, remember that Our Blessed Mother did the same thing leading up to Christmas. I think my favorite song to meditate on her travels while I make mine is today’s Carol of Comfort & Joy, “Maria Durch Ein Dornwald Ging” – “Mary Walks Among the Thorns”. […]Read more

Did you know that “O Christmas Tree” was originally written in praise of an everyday evergreen? That’s right! The song’s original name was “O Tannenbaum,” borrowing from the German language for “Fir Tree.” Its lyrics are credited to Ernst Anschütz, an organist, in 1824 in Leipzig, Germany as a simple ode to the fir tree’s […]Read more

Have you ever visited a new place and been so enamored by it, you write a song about it? That’s just what happened to Phillips Brooks, an Episcopalian clergyman, when he visited Bethlehem for the first time in 1865. What came from his trip we now know as “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.   Bethlehem inspired […]Read more

As you’re winding up for Christmas, it might be a surprise to remember that the night of Christ’s birth was awfully quiet. Aside from the noises of the animals around the manger, we believe that the night Jesus was born was one of peace and light. I know it can be hard to remember that […]Read more

In the same poll in which experts ranked “In the Bleak Midwinter” as the best Christmas carol, do you know what the second one is?  “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” – also called ““in dulci jubilo” (Latin for “in sweet rejoicing”) comes from the Middle Ages – some think from Heinrich Seuse in 1328, a mystic, […]Read more

What would YOU do with 264 gifts?   That’s the plight of the narrator in today’s Carol of Comfort & Joy, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. While the twelve days, the days after Christmas Day to Epiphany on January 6th, start off relatively tame with just one partridge and one pear tree, by the end we […]Read more

Today, our Carol of Comfort & Joy is the most published hymn in North America: “Joy to the World!”   English minister and logician Isaac Watts wrote the lyrics in 1719 as a reinterpretation of Psalm 98. This carol’s tune came much later in 1848, written by American composer and banker Lowell Mason. Watts used the […]Read more