Christmas carols history
Each of us has memories from Christmas songs that we treasure since childhood. As children, we never question these things, we just listen to them and come to love them. Legend has it that the first Christmas hymn was sung when Jesus was born. Can you imagine it was more than 2000 years ago? However, it was only during the year 1200 that St. Francis of Assisi had the Christmas songs published in a language understandable and spoken by all instead of Latin.
Over time, there have been many Christian leaders and parishioners who have made it commonplace to put on a Christmas show and singing Christmas carols has been a big part of the elaborate show. Christmas carols have been added to American culture from all English-speaking countries, from England to Australia.
In 1447, when Johannes Gutenberg conceived the mechanical printing press, this allowed things to be copied in a fairly short period of time, which meant that the words and letters of the Christmas carols could be copied over and over again and distributed, which is what that made Christmas carols become so popular.
Naturally, around this time, Christmas and Christianity were a very important part of everyone’s life. Unfortunately, in the year 1649, Cromwell abolished all Catholic customs in England, including Christmas. When Charles II restored these traditions in 1661, Christmas carols became one of the most popular traditions.
Most of the well-known Christmas carols were written from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century and are still popular today. For example, Frederich Handel performed the well-known “Messiah” for the first time at a charity event in 1742.
As for “Silent Night”, it was written in 1818 by the Austrian Joseph Mohr and its original title was “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”. His church organ had broken and he needed to write a song that could be accompanied by a guitar instead of this instrument and then he wrote this wonderful Christmas carol.
These days, it’s easy to create a Christmas carol – when the holiday season rolls around, artists and Hollywood produce their Christmas anthem. But we still have a preference for the flavors and sounds of old Christmas songs. We all tend to stick to traditions and although we like new Christmas carols, none of them could replace old ones like We Wish You a Merry Christmas or Jingle Bells. Although the number of Christmas carols we hear is very large, almost none are new.
So this year, gather your family and friends around the tree and sing these beautiful Christmas carols; it is one of the best ways to celebrate Christmas.