What are your favorites – your top 10 Christmas carols?
I made a list of mine. It was hard to stop at ten, but I did it. Then I went on the Internet to see if I could find a list of the most popular Christmas carols. Chris Wilson compiled a list of favorites for the TIME NewsFeed. His basis for identifying the favorites was the number of times the carol has been commercially recorded since 1978. (The article was dated December 18, 2013.) Here’s the list, along with the number of times the carol has been recorded:
- Silent Night (733)
- Joy to the World (391)
- O Holy Night (374)
- What Child Is This? (329)
- Away in a Manger (300)
- O Come, All Ye Faithful (296)
- Ave Maria (270)
- God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (236)
- The First Noel (234)
- Angels We Have Heard on High (220)
The list is very similar to my own list – only a few differences. I included “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” and “There’s a Song in the Air.” (This last one is on my list because I can still hear my late Aunt Edith singing it. I’ve always loved that song, especially the way she sang it with her beautiful, clear, high soprano voice.)
Last week, at the women’s worship service in the county jail, we had a Christmas Carol sing. The chaplain provided a fairly extensive song sheet, and invited the inmates to choose the songs to sing. The first carol requested was “Silent Night.” The chaplain said we would save that for the last song to sing at the end of the service. The next song requested was “Joy to the World.” Then, “O Holy Night.” We sang most of the songs on the “Top 10” list, plus several others. It was so much fun to sing all those old Christmas carols together!
What’s so special about singing Christmas carols? I think many of us have a shared childhood experience of singing these songs with friends and family, at home, school and church. We also associate these songs with all the excitement of Christmas, including school programs and church pageants. Many of the songs have words that tell the story of the birth of Jesus. Some of the images are quite vivid – like
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
the little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head;
the stars in the sky looked down where He lay,
the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
Other songs are just fun to sing – like the “Glo—–ri-a” in “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
One of my new favorite Christmas Carols is “Before the Marvel of This Night.” The image is so fresh and exciting. The setting of the song is the angels in heaven getting ready to go to earth to sing to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. They are as excited as can be about what they are getting ready to do. Here are the words:
Before the Marvel of this night,
adoring, fold your wings and bow,
then tear the sky apart with light
and with your news the world endow.
Proclaim the birth of Christ and peace,
that fear and death and sorrow cease:
Sing peace, sing peace, sing gift of peace,
sing peace, sing gift of peace!
Awake the sleeping world with song,
this is the day the Lord has made.
assemble here, celestial throng,
in royal splendor come arrayed.
Give earth a glimpse of heav’nly bliss,
a teasing taste of what they miss:
sing bliss, sing bliss, sing endless bliss,
sing bliss, sing endless bliss!
The love that we have always known,
our constant joy and endless light,
now to the loveless world be shown,
now break upon its deathly night.
Into one song compress the love
that rules our universe above:
sing love, sing love, sing God is love,
sing love, sing God is love!
© 1981 Jaroslav J. Vajda
It’s Christmas Eve today. Can’t you just imagine what it was like for the angels getting ready to announce Jesus’ birth to the shepherds? Don’t you wish you were there? Over the centuries since then, composers have written plenty of angel carols that describe the angels brightening the sky and singing “Glo——ri-a” but this is the first carol I’ve heard that captures the excitement the angels felt.
Hope you feel some of that excitement today as you sing or listen to your favorite Christmas carols.
Merry Christmas!
Whispering Winds Blog 
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