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Read on to discover the mysteries of In the Bleak Midwinter<\/em>, voted our best Christmas carol of all time…<\/strong><\/p> December 1906 was one of the hardest on record. Fierce blizzards swept Scotland, more than a foot of snow was reported in Norfolk and most of Britain lay under a deep blanket of white. When, on Christmas Eve, churches across the country were filled with the sound of a newly published carol by the 30-year-old Gustav Holst<\/a><\/strong>, the words of its opening verse must have resonated with congregations, many of whom had braved treacherous conditions to get there: \u2018In the bleak midwinter\/Frosty wind made moan\/Earth stood hard as iron\/Water like a stone\u2026\u2019<\/p> Holst had been commissioned to write three carols by his friend and mentor Ralph Vaugh Williams<\/a><\/strong>, co-editor of the English Hymnal<\/em>, published in October 1906 by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Church of England. In the Bleak Midwinter<\/a><\/strong><\/em> was the first of Holst\u2019s contributions to the new volume, a setting of a poem by Christina Rossetti which first appeared as A Christmas Carol<\/em> in the January 1872 edition of Scribner\u2019s Monthly<\/em>, a respected and influential American literary periodical. The poem seems simple, verging on banality in its rhyming schemes (\u2026snow on snow\/ \u2026long ago). But delve a little deeper, and the cultural influences and philosophical ideas are far reaching.<\/p> When was In the Bleak Midwinter<\/em> composed?<\/h2>