This book gathers the carols many of us sing each December and tells where they came from, what the words mean, and where Scripture ties in. Each chapter points to a carol, gives the lyrics, the Bible passages behind the lines, and the story of how the song found its shape. QR codes let readers hear fresh performances by Dorothy Lewis-Griffith.
“Joy to the World” begins not as a Christmas carol, but as Isaac Watts’s paraphrase of Psalm 98. More than a century later, Lowell Mason set it to a tune he linked to Handel, and it took the form we know. “We Three Kings” is John Henry Hopkins Jr.’s American pageant song, written so that three voices could carry the gifts and their meaning. “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” traces the Rose to prophecy and to early printings in sixteenth-century Germany, with Praetorius’s beloved harmony. “Silent Night” starts in an Austrian church with a broken organ and a simple guitar, then travels to trenches and living rooms where people needed peace.
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” walks out of old English streets, printed on broadsheets and kept alive by night watchmen. “I Wonder as I Wander” carries John Jacob Niles’s field notes from Appalachia and a few remembered lines sung by a child. “Go Tell It on the Mountain” rises with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the work of John Wesley Work Jr. to preserve spirituals.
“The First Noel” and “Away in a Manger” show how tradition moves through time, across languages, and into children’s voices. “Good Christian Men Rejoice” reaches back to “In Dulci Jubilo,” while “O Come All Ye Faithful” comes to English from “Adeste Fideles.” A postlude visits Liszt’s Christmas suite for his granddaughter and the carols woven into it.
The pages hold photographs, brief notes on customs, and permissions for schools, churches, choirs, and non-profits to use the material for services and instruction. The book closes with a plain wish that belongs to this season. Peace on earth, and goodwill toward all.
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