The Carols of Christmas by Andrew Gant goes through various popular carols of Christmas and tells some of their intricate, and often confusing, history. You may not come out of the book wiser than when you started it about who wrote such and such a carol but Gant himself warns of this in the intro: "…if you occasionally get to the end of a chapter in this book slightly unsure about who wrote words or tunes or bits of either, me too…." Apparently we don't know exactly who wrote some of the songs, and many of them were revised from their original written form.

One of the histories I found particularly interesting was that of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, originally Hark How all the Welkin Rings' by Charles Wesley. Apparently George Whitefield was one of the people who revised the song, one of the verses he changed was "universal nature say 'Christ the Lord is born today!'" to "With th'Angelic hosts proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem!'" I found it interesting that Mendelssohn, the man who composed the music that was eventually used for the words, didn't think that the tune was fit for religious songs and that it would "never do for sacred words. There must be a national and merry subject found out…" Nowadays it would be hard for me to picture it put to secular words!

Gant's style of writing is a bit confusing at times, he strikes me as trying too hard to be casual, which doesn't always flow very well in my opinion. Also some of his statements were a bit weird, for instance, his comment, "the most potent force in the shaping of human destinies: luck", and then again, when speaking of the original lines of Wesley's hymn, cited above, "universal nature say…" he declares that , "…there is something gloriously inclusive, almost pantheistic…in Wesley's lines…much better than Whitefield's replacement." Statements like that seem a bit odd for a Christian to say. There were several songs where I had wished that he would have dealt more with the history of the wording and meaning of the words but he focused on the development/ evolution of the commonly used tune (or tunes) for the carol instead.

All in all it was a bit confusing, and I think it could have been written a lot better than it is, but it did have interesting tidbits of carol history in it, and the cover is pretty and feels neat!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the BookLook blogging program in exchange for my review, which did not have to be favorable.
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I’ve loved to collect Christmas music for years. Everyone has their favorite carol—and their favorite rendition of their favorite carol. The carols come to us from every phase of Christian history, and from many languages. Sometimes we can tell how ancient they are just by their structure. Christmas songs are so abundant and diverse, it’s like having a whole world of music centered on this one season of the year. That’s why I was eager to read this book about the history of the most popular carols—and I enjoyed “The Carols of Christmas” almost as much as I was hoping to. The carols you like say everything about you. This book helps explain exactly why that is.

Mr. Gant, a college professor and choirmaster, gives detailed, well-researched lectures on 21 popular carols. The book is divided into sections based on the phases of the Christmas season. (For instance, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is at the beginning since it emphasizes the Advent of Christ. “We Three Kings is at the end, since the Wise Men came long after Jesus’ birth and their coming was celebrated after Christmas for centuries.) The style tends towards academic and stuffy, but I found reading it aloud to my little sister, a music student, enormously helped tap into the book’s potential. Lectures are typically heard by groups of people because the shared experience helps with learning.

There were all sorts of fun little tidbits. Did you know that “Away in a Manger” was baldly, dishonestly attributed to Martin Luther—when he DID NOT WRITE IT—on its publication in the late 19th century? That “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” has literally hundreds of variations that could fill a whole book on their own? That the French author of the soaring “O Holy Night” was anti-religious and that the tune was composed by a man who wrote their equivalent of film scores? That “The Holly and the Ivy” was a crass pagan fertility song into which early Christians sewed faith lessons? And that “Good King Wenceslas” was put into our current carol form by a man who mysteriously created such crowd hostility that people threatened to stone him and burn down his house? These are just some of the many pieces of information in this book.

The carols covered are: O Come, O Come Emmanuel; O Christmas Tree; The Holly and the Ivy; I Saw Three Ships; O Little Town of Bethlehem; Good Christian Men Rejoice; O Come All Ye Faithful; While Shepherds Watched; O Holy Night; Ding Dong Merrily on High; Angels From The Realms of Glory; Hark the Herald Angels Sing; Away in a Manger; I Wonder As I Wander; Good King Wenceslas; Personent Hodie; Here We Come a Wassailing; The Twelve Days of Christmas; We Three Kings; What Child is This?; and Jingle Bells.

I was given this book by BookLookBloggers in exchange for my honest opinion. ( )

Fascinating stories of how many of our popular Christmas carols came to be. Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read! ( )

Christmas Carols is charming, highly readable history of popular Christmas carols, mostly English, but a few American as well. Organized vaguely by theme, each chapter tells the story of a carol followed by the song's text set to music of its most common arrangement(s). The introduction is also very, very interesting, focusing on the the history of the word "carol" and of carols themselves. Originally they could be about anything, and only later did they become solely associated with religion and in particular with Christmas. Anyone with an interest in history and a fondness for carols may want to seek this one out. Highly recommended. ( )