The Evolution of Christmas music

While most people are probably still busy with the final stretch of studying for 2022, the intense cold and the lovely Christmas tree in the Internaat have instilled me with the yearly Christmas spirit. Despite the incessant Christmas music playing in most grocery stores and public spaces, I'm still very much a fan of Christmas music. To get even more in the Christmas spirit and learn something about this amazing music I figured I'd go on a Christmas journey through time and take you with me. 

Late Fourth Century 

We start in the late fourth century in Milan. This is the site of the earliest recorded piece of recognized Christmas music. Unsurprisingly given the time of its creation, this is a religious hymn. The hymn is called “Veni redemptor gentium”, which is Latin for “Come, redeemer of the nations”. It was written by Ambrose of Milan, who was the Bishop of Milan during that time. The piece is about celebrating the birth of Christ and welcoming him to the earth so that he might enlighten people's lives. This hymn became very popular very quickly when it was written and remained that way for most of history. It was still so ubiquitous more than a millennium later that the well-known theologian Martin Luther translated it to German under the name “Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland” in the year 1524. This was Martin Luther’s first translation of a song into German when he started working on his first hymnal (a book with hymns). Also interesting for the more poetically inclined readers: the text is written in iambic tetrameter, meaning there are four iambs per sentence. People might recognize the flow of the sentences from Shakespeare’s writing, which was often in iambic pentameter, or five iambs per sentence. 

Tangent aside, I shall provide you with a link here to the song on YouTube, I highly recommend listening to it:

Fifteenth/Sixteenth Century 

From the very religious hymns, we jump much further in time to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Here we take a look at one of the first Christmas Carols. Carols are songs or hymns that are sung specifically around Christmas time. While carols are still religious songs, they differ from hymns in that they are not directly related to worship but contain religious themes. These were also often sung by commoners, more so than by church officials. They became more popularized during the protestant reformation, which welcomed warmer music. One Christmas carol that pretty much everyone still knows at least the melody of today is “Deck the Halls. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the first two lines of the song go as follows: 

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!” 

In case you still don't know the song, google it. Anyway, while the English text was written in the 1800s by Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, this well-known melody already existed in the sixteenth century for a Welsh “air” named “Nos Galan”. An air is a melody for a vocal folk song or ballad, and the English counterpart to the Italian “Arias” is often heard in operas. The original air Nos Galan was often sung during New Year's Eve. This changed for Deck the Halls, as it is now exclusively sung during Christmas instead. I shall link versions of both Nos Galan and Deck the Halls here for you, to save you the arduous task of finding them yourself: 

Nos Galan:

Deck the Halls:

Modern Times 

We now arrive in the past 100 years of our temporal Christmas journey. This is where 99% of the Christmas songs we still know today originate from. However, when you ask anyone, most of these songs are not from the past few years. Instead, most of them are probably at least around 50 years old, or maybe even older. Why is that? I don't know, but if you allow me to speculate a bit, this is what I think contributes to this phenomenon. 

From the 1940s onward, recording technologies improved significantly, making it easier for the music of that time to spread throughout society, making the first of these Christmas songs more likely to be successful. This also meant that these songs got covered very frequently by other artists. There are usually a lot of versions of your favorite Christmas tune for instance. Anyway, the improvement in recording technologies meant that there was a lot of Christmas music during the 40s and 50s. The western world, fresh out of a world war, likely clung to this music for comfort, which meant that the music of that time really established itself as the Christmas music. Because Christmas is an inherently nostalgic part of the year, the children of that generation came to know those Christmas songs as the typical music of the holiday, and their children learned the same, passing it through the generations. The importance of that time period in the formation of the style of Christmas music can still be seen today, as exemplified by the popularity of Michael Bublé’s Christmas album. Michael Bublé's voice and music remind me of old artists such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, and others, who all have popular Christmas songs to their name. The fact that Bublé emulates this style means that his Christmas music is some of the little contemporary Christmas music that passes society's scrutiny indicates that it is indeed this style of 40s and 50s music that has become synonymous with Christmas music for us. 

Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble my theory on today's Christmas music. I enjoyed researching Christmas music to be able to talk to you about this, even though it meant I had to listen to even more Christmas music. I'll leave you with some of my favorite Christmas music that I just can't help but share with you. Please listen to it, and if you have Christmas songs of your own that you think I need to hear, do let me know! 

Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade:

Santa Baby – Vulfpeck:

God rest ye merry gentlemen: