The History Of The Christmas Carols



Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008

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Christmas songs happen to be some of the warmest memories a lot of us have from our childhood.  When we were children, we learned these things, loved them and would never ask ourselves questions about them.  The New Testament pretends that the first Christmas chant dates from Jesus' birth. That is well over 2,000 years ago, can you imagine?  However, it is only during the 1200's that St Francis of Assisi made Christmas songs published in a language understandable and spoken by average people instead of Latin.

As time has passed, there have been a lot of Christian leaders and parishioners who have make it a popular custom to put on a show about Christmas and singing the carols have been a huge part of the elaborate show.  For decades, American Christian culture grows by the addition of Christmas carols from various parts of the world.
 
In 1447, Johannes Gutenberg conceived the mechanical printing press; which allowed people to copy things in a short amount of time. And thus the words and lyrics to the Christmas carols were copied and distributed all over the countries; which made them become so popular.

Around this same time, Christianity was the greatest part of everyone's life and thus, Christmas was also very important time.  Unfortunately, the year 1649, Cromwell banned all Catholic customs in England, including Christmas. When in 1661 Charles II restored these traditions, singing carols became one of the most popular traditions.

The largest part of well known Christmas carols were written from the mid-1700's to the early 1800's and are still popular today.  In 1742 there was a fundraiser in Ireland where George Frederich Handel performed the well known "Messiah" carol.
 
In reality, "Silent Night" was written by a man from Austria in 1818 named Joseph Mohr.  The story of this Christmas carol is the following one: the organ of his church had broken and he needed to write a song that did not require to use this instrument but that could be accompanied by a guitar.

Today, it is easy to create a carol: when the holiday season comes, artists as well as Hollywood produce their Christmas hymn. But we still have a preference for the atmosphere and the sounds of the old Christmas songs. Traditions are hard to leave and while we might like new carols none of them would ever replace oldies like  White Christmas or The First Nowell.  While the number of Christmas songs we listen to is really large, almost none of them is a recent one. 

So, this year, gather your family and friends around the tree and sing these beautiful songs; it is one of the best ways to celebrate the Christmas holiday.

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