What do the weird and wonderful words of our best-known Christmas carols actually mean? Andrew Stewart looks into some popular Christmas carol lyrics <\/p>
The average English Christmas carol may well be humble of musical and literary stature. But it routinely tows with it a train of rich cultural baggage for which the keys have all too often been mislaid or lost.<\/strong><\/p>\n References to medieval religious traditions, archaic words and ancient customs now touch the ears of those of every faith, of no faith or with a blind devotion to conspicuous yuletide consumption. What matters, though, is that the joyful spirit and the eternal freshness of old carols have survived Puritan proscriptions, Victorian modernisers and post-modern cynicism.<\/p>\n Countless millions today know the tune, if not the words, of at least one traditional Christmas carol. Thanks to dogged scholarship by twentieth-century collectors and editors, we can unlock the meaning and trace the roots of our favourite carols. The following examples should add spice to flavour ten of the most popular pieces in the Christmas repertoire.<\/p>\n Find hundreds of Christmas carol lyrics<\/a> on our website<\/strong><\/p>\n English traditional<\/em><\/p>\n Christmastide luck-visits or \u2018goodings\u2019 formed a widespread custom in England during the early modern period, part of a seasonal relaxation of the strict forms and order of society that stretched back to the Middle Ages. The Gloucester Wassail<\/em> opens with a keyword in the luck visitor\u2019s vocabulary, one that grew to carry a meaning not so far removed from today\u2019s \u2018trick or treat\u2019.<\/p>\n Wassail derives, by way of Norman French, from the Old Norse salutation wesheill<\/em>, literally \u2018be whole\u2019 or \u2018be well\u2019. Joseph Strutt, in the third volume of his The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England <\/em>(1801), refers to the wassail bowl, \u2018which was carried about by young women on New Year\u2019s Eve, who went from door to door \u2026 singing.\u2019 The company of carollers expected \u2018a small gratuity in return\u2019.<\/p>\n The white bread mentioned in The Gloucestershire Wassail\u2019<\/em>s first verse was a foodstuff of the wealthy, suggesting that wassail singers began their rounds at the \u2018big house\u2019. The choristers were also on the lookout for \u2018Christmas pie\u2019, made from game, and \u2018a bowl of the best\u2019.<\/p>\n English traditional<\/em><\/p>\n Known in Germany as \u2018Christ\u2019s thorn\u2019, holly or the holy-tree served as an emblem of the Roman feast of Saturnalia. The Saxons also used holly and ivy in their winter rites. Although the Druids regarded ivy as a portent of death, the early Christians came to associate the plant\u2019s evergreen properties with everlasting life.<\/p>\n Cecil Sharp notated the words and melody of the most familiar \u2018Holly and Ivy\u2019 carol from the singing of Mrs Mary Clayton at Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. Sharp drew on other sources for the version he published in 1911, which has since become a staple of the Christmas carol repertoire. Several \u2018holly and ivy\u2019 carols survive from the medieval period, in which masculine holly and feminine ivy are presented as rivals.<\/p>\n Here is the popular melody composed by Henry Walford Davies<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\nChristmas carol lyrics<\/h2>\n
Wassail! Wassail! All over the Town! (The Gloucestershire Wassail)<\/h3>\n
The Holly and the Ivy<\/h3>\n