The cycle of songs that play like ambient music in American shops and parties during the holiday season draw – occasionally – from ancient roots that tell a Christmas story of mummery, mysticism and medieval Christianity.
Early Christmas songs often commingle Latin and common tongues such as English or French. The word “carol” implies a mix of religiosity and festivity – it refers to a French circle dance, “carole.” Some of even the oldest tunes are ready-made for wassailing, the tradition of traveling house to house as a singing band, caroling at front doors in exchange for a snack or warm drink.
If you want to experience a good wassail yourself, the town of Los Altos Hills has scheduled a Christmas caroling and hiking event 7:30-9 p.m. Thursday. Visitors can join in singing carols, and no singing experience is necessary.
Many carols focus on Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, describing the angels, shepherds and wise men who, like the singers, array themselves to receive a prophesied baby.
His mother’s journey – the idea of waiting, in anticipation, for an uncertain but glorious moment – provides the perfect setting for a solemn, and sometimes even spooky, season of song.
Although it is seldom reflected in larger Christmas culture, at least in America, the Christian Church’s period of Advent, derived from the Latin for “coming,” stretches through December as a time for quiet lighting of candles and preparing in sympathy with a pregnant mother.
FIVE carols of Advent worth seeking this year
The “Wexford Carol,” an Irish song that dates to at least the 17th century, may have origins that stretch much further but can only be dated to when it was first put down in print. It walks a singer through the story of the Nativity after beginning with a theological suggestion:
Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
Bluegrass musician Alison Krauss’ duet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma shows off the plaintive potential in the song at its finest, both on Ma’s album “Songs of Joy and Peace” (2008) and in the video of their studio session, available on YouTube.
The “Huron Carol,” a Canadian song written by a missionary living among the Huron/Wendat people in Ontario, dates to the same era but recounts a Nativity transformed by context. The carol as originally written uses the Wyandot language but a traditional French folk melody. An English translation that entered the canon in 1926 tries to preserve the language of a new world but makes up much of the “native” imagery from whole cloth.
Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapp’d His beauty round;
For a more faithful translation from the original Wyandot, Heather Dale’s trilingual version of the carol, sung in Wendat, French and English, provides a sung experience utterly unlike, but complementary to, other carols of the time. The tune is sinuous and circular, perfect for a “carole”:
Three chieftains saw before Noël
A star as bright as day;
“So fair a sign,” the chieftains said,
“Shall lead us where it may.”
You can find her performance online, or on the album “This Endris Night” (2002).
A Renaissance-era carol derived from a much earlier poem, “Down in Yon Forest,” captures the mysterious, even mystical, spirit of the Advent season. The song traveled throughout Europe and the Americas as part of the folk tradition, its text drawing from, and straying from, the ancient text of the “Corpus Christi Carol.” Does it refer to the Holy Grail, or to some other, early, medieval fairy tale mashed up with the bated breath of Advent?
Down in yon forest there stands a hall:
The bells of Paradise I heard them ring:
It’s covered all over with purple and pall
And I love my Lord Jesus above anything.
In Joan Baez’s beautifully orchestrated rendition of “Down in Yon Forest” (“Noel,” 1967), strings beat like an attendant pacing a hallway, waiting, while her voice races through lyrics that grow increasingly boggling as they descend into medieval allegory.
As a capstone to the spooky and unlikely for Christmas, one has to turn to the idea of “lullay,” the soothing sound sung to a child – the lullaby. An iconic Christmas carol first written down in the 16th century, with an equally early tune, the “Coventry Carol” may sound as though it serenades the newborn Christ child:
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
But no. Carolers are in fact singing to the doomed children of the land, whom King Herod ordered killed in an attempt to prevent the coming of the future king foretold by prophecy.
That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
Traditionally sung a cappella, the “Coventry Carol” was originally performed as part of a mystery play – one of the earliest known forms of European theatrical to emerge after the era once known as the Dark Ages. Mystery plays enacted stories from the Bible, accompanied by song. From Adam and Eve to the Last Judgment, villages had plays for every cycle in the church’s season – but Christmas was peak time for story crafting. Hence the bloodthirsty drama that might seem so unlikely for a carol of Advent. Beautiful renditions of this carol have been recorded by everyone from Annie Lennox to Sting and Sufjan Stevens, but I have a personal fondness for the deep-voiced thrum of Alison Moyet’s rendition, from the album “A Very Special Christmas Vol. 1” (1987).
For a less haunting tune, one drawn more of everyday life, the ancient charm of the “Cherry Tree Carol” captures a bickering Mary and Joseph set less in Nazareth and more in countryside England. The song itself is very old, dating perhaps to the early 1400s, but may exist now as a patchwork collection of multiple songs, with variations among.
In the carol, a pregnant Mary walks in an orchard with Joseph, and meekly asks him to pick her cherries to eat. He flies into a temper and refuses, telling her, “Let the father of your baby gather cherries for thee.”
But his fit of pique is just the setup necessary for an act of grace that showcases Jesus as both baby and nascent supernatural force:
The up spoke Lord Jesus from in his mother’s womb,
“Bow low down, cherry trees, bow down to the ground.”
And the cherry trees bowed down, bowed low to the ground,
And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood round.
English folk singer Shirley Collins’ 1959 performance of the carol, recorded by Alan Lomax and still discoverable on YouTube, provides a place to first encounter “Cherry Tree.” Collins, a staple of the English folk revival, has renditions of many of ancient carols worth seeking out (including “Down in Yon Forest”). But her work collecting folk songs in the American South with Lomax highlights the fact that many ancient European carols found new life, with altered lyrics and adjusted tunes, centuries later in America’s far-flung folk traditions across Appalachia and the South. EmmyLou Harris’ rendition of “Cherry Tree” echoes that history with its Americana styling.
Photos courtesy of Wikimedia
