A Pre-Victorian Christmas: The Early Beginnings of Christmas Music

Music Arrangements and Historical Essay by D. Craswell

It is sometimes said that Christmas was invented by the Victorians. Taken literally, this claim is incorrect. What IS true is that many of today's Christmas traditions - including Christmas cards and decorated trees - were introduced into England only in the late 1800s. Many of these new "traditions" were popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with the help of Victorian authors like Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. 

In fact, if it wasn't the Victorians who invented modern Christmas, it is not clear who DID. In the decades and centuries before 1837 (when Victoria took the throne), the celebration of Christmas had been both sporadic and controversial. 

For example, under the Roman empire Christmas took a back seat to other end-of-the-year festivals like the Roman Saturnalia, or to Yule and the midwinter festivals of northern Europe. In addition to other challenges, the early Christians may have found it hard to compete with pagan holidays designed around wine, women and song. 

Going back even earlier, it has been observed that nobody in the Bible is ever shown celebrating Christmas. True, one occasionally hears rumors of a lost letter from St. Paul to the merchants of Antioch in which he instructs the merchants to open their shops early the day after Thanksgiving. However, modern scholars consider these rumors unfounded. 

In part for these reasons, the Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony (and who certainly took their Bible seriously) never celebrated Christmas at all. They also prohibited anyone else in their colony from celebrating it. As late as the 1850s, Boston schools still held classes on Christmas day and treated it like any other day. 

Meanwhile, back in England, wars had been fought over whether Christmas was an appropriate holiday for good Christians to observe. In 1649, the Rev. Thomas Mockett condemned Christmas celebrations for having re-introduced "all the heathenish customs and pagan rites and ceremonies that the idolatrous heathens used, as riotous drinking, health drinking [toasts], gluttony, luxury, wantonness, dancing, dicing, stage-plays ... [and] all other pagan sports ...." Christmas was being celebrated, yes, but not in a way that clergymen necessarily approved. 

What does this have to do with Christmas music? The Christmas music of today also reflects two distinct traditions. One of those traditions dates only from Victorian times; the other is more varied and much older. 

Consider: many (but not all) of today's Christmas songs were introduced self-consciously in the late 1800s. Songs like "Away in a Manger," "Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem," and "We Three Kings of Orient Are," all fall into this category. They were written by composers and lyricists whose names are known, and who set out deliberately to add to our stock of Christmas songs. In effect, these are the musical equivalents of the stories of Charles Dickens and Walter Scott. 

By contrast, the songs in this playlist date mostly from pre-Victorian times. These songs were not composed specifically for Christmas. In fact, they were not really "composed" at all, at least not by any composer whose name has survived. In those days before widespread printing, most songs survived only if they were repeated by one musician to another, as part of an oral tradition. The songs that did not catch on fell into disuse, and many are now forgotten.

In keeping with this pre-Victorian informality, lyrics from one song were often borrowed for another, as performers wrote new words for melodies that were already familiar to their audiences. Thus, a song performed with Christmas lyrics in December was just as likely to be sung at midsummer (with very different lyrics!) or at any other time of the year. For example, the final song in this playlist - known to most Americans as "Ding, dong, merrily on high" - was originally a 15th century dance tune called "Branle de l'officiel," or (loosely translated) "Ring Dance in the Servants' Hall." 

In arranging these songs for performance, I have tried to use instruments and playing styles appropriate to the various countries and regions. The arrangements are mostly my own, but in some cases I have borrowed from choral arrangements by others - specifically, from 16th and 17th century settings by Thomas Prætorius (for the first verses of #5 and #8); from 20th century settings by Llewelyn Gomer (the first verse of #4) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (all of #13); and from a 15th century setting by that prolific composer "Anon" (most of #7).