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Fizzing with energy and festive cheer, The Christmas Carrolls is a heart-warming must-read for the Christmas period. Mel's writing sparkles like the star on top of a Christmas Tree.' Jennifer Bell, author of The Uncommoners trilogy Christmas, remembering the birth of Jesus, then started to be celebrated at the same time as the solstice, so the early Christians started singing Christian songs instead of pre-Christian/pagan ones. In 129, a Roman Bishop said that a song called "Angel's Hymn" should be sung at a Christmas service in Rome. Another famous early Christmas Hymn was written in 760, by Comas of Jerusalem, for the Greek Orthodox Church. Soon after this many composers all over Europe started to write 'Christmas carols'. However, not many people liked them as they were all written and sung in Latin, a language that the normal people couldn't understand. The ghostly visitors are not of the Christian kind, but ghost stories were popular in Victorian England. Each ghost is very distinctive in appearance and manner. Coghlan, Alexandra (2016). Carols from King's. Random House. p.84. ISBN 9781785940941 . Retrieved 7 October 2016.
Dial-a-Carol: Student-run holiday jingle service open 24/7". USA TODAY College . Retrieved 24 February 2016. Father Joseph Mohr wrote his six-stanza poem Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht! in 1816 when he was assigned to a pilgrim church in Mariapfarr, Austria. Two years later, after a transfer to St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria, the Catholic priest decided he wanted his poem set to music. On Dec. 24, 1818, he asked his friend Franz Gruber to create a melody and guitar accompaniment. The two men sang the carol at Christmas Mass in St. Nicholas Church with Fr. Mohr playing his guitar and the choir repeating the last two lines of each verse.Giuseppe Cacciatore (1960). "Alfonso Maria de Liguori, santo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol.2. Treccani. Whilst it is a book whose unhurried and detailed descriptions of Christmas are the epitome of the season (“ apoplectic opulence”), it is a book of great contrasts: humbug/festivities, hot/cold, company/solitude, poverty/wealth, worthy poor/wastrels, past/future etc. Ashley, Judith (1924). "Mediæval Christmas Carols". Music & Letters. 5 (1): 65–71. doi: 10.1093/ml/V.1.65. ISSN 0027-4224. JSTOR 726261. A Christmas Carol hits on some important societal issues, and it has iconic, unforgettable characters. It also has some laugh-out-loud moments.
Charles Oakley’s text found its appeal when paired with a rousing tune by Martin Shaw called Little Conard. The hymn tells the story of the Advent message of the coming of the Christ Child spreading to all four corners of the globe. This Welsh carol starts with the exhortation to ‘come together and cheer as one, Hallelujah!’ Versions have been released by several well known Welsh artists including Bryn Terfel and Iestyn Jones. Greek tradition calls for children to go out with triangles from house to house on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and Epiphany Eve, and sing the corresponding folk carols, called the Kalanta or Kalanda or Kalanta Christougenon, the word deriving from the Roman calends). There are separate carols for each of the three great feasts, referring respectively to the Nativity, to St. Basil and the New Year, and to the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, along with wishes for the household. In addition to the carols for the winter festive season, there are also the springtime or Lenten carols, commonly called the "Carols of Lazarus", sung on the Saturday before Palm Sunday as a harbinger of the Resurrection of Christ to be celebrated a week later. It has been a decade since I last read this classic, so I decided to look at it again, taking note of what I have forgotten or imperfectly remembered and also garnering any new insights my older (and I hope wiser) self could now find within it. This carol tells of the Bohemian Duke and Martyr ‘Wenceslaus’ who was converted to Christianity in the 10th century. The tune is actually from a spring ‘carol’ originally found in the same medieval songbook as ‘Gaudete’.The book opens with wonderful bathos, “ Marley was dead, to begin with.” So right from the outset it is clear it is not a straightforward factual tale. Apart from the famous ghosts (of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come), which were not unusual in literature of the time, it has time travel and parallel worlds, where each significant choice leads to a branching of reality, which is a staple of much great sci fi. Not such a typical Victorian novel after all. The Nadala or Cançó de Nadal (in plural nadales) are a popular group of songs, usually requiring a chorus, that are song from Advent until Epiphany. Their written versions starts in the 15th century. In the past were usually being song by shepherds and their families in market squares and in front of churches. In addition, some carols describe Christmas-related events of a religious nature, but not directly related to the birth of Jesus. For example: Many carols are regional, being popular in specific regions but unknown in others, whereas some are popular throughout the two countries. Examples of the latter are the Peloponnesian Christmas carol "Christoúgenna, Prōtoúgenna" ("Christmas, Firstmas"), the Constantinopolitan Christmas carol "Kalēn hespéran, árchontes" ("Good evening, lords"), and the New Year's carol "Archimēniá ki archichroniá" ("First of the month, first of the year"). The oldest known carol, commonly referred to as the "Byzantine Carol" ( Byzantine Greek: Άναρχος θεός καταβέβηκεν, Ánarkhos Theós katabébēken, "God, who has no beginning, descended"), is linguistically dated to the beginning of the High Middle Ages, ca. 1000 AD; it is traditionally associated with the city of Kotyora in the Pontos (modern-day Ordu, Turkey).
The publication of Christmas music books in the 19th century helped to widen the popular appeal of carols. " God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen", " The First Noel", " I Saw Three Ships" and " Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" appear in English antiquarian William Sandys' 1833 collection Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern. [8] Composers such as Arthur Sullivan helped to repopularise the carol, and it is this period that gave rise to such favourites as " Good King Wenceslas" and " It Came Upon the Midnight Clear", a New England carol written by Edmund H. Sears and Richard S. Willis. The publication in 1871 of Christmas Carols, New and Old by Henry Ramsden Bramley and Sir John Stainer was a significant contribution to a revival of carols in Victorian Britain. In 1916, Charles Lewis Hutchins published Carols Old and Carols New, a scholarly collection which suffered from a short print run and is consequently rarely available today. The Oxford Book of Carols, first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press (OUP), was a notably successful collection; edited by the British composers Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams, along with clergyman and author Percy Dearmer, it became a widely used source of carols in among choirs and church congregations in Britain and remains in print today. [9] [10]
About Mel Taylor-Bessent
In addition to being hard of heart, Scrooge is a man with a deliberate philosophy of self-exoneration. It consists of two principles: 1) taxpayers fund the poor houses and prisons, thereby discharging in full their obligation to all of their fellow human beings, and 2) death by starvation, although it may seem regrettable, is actually a positive good as proven by science (because Malthus!), and relieves the rest of us of the burden of a surplus population. This philosophy is the shield that protects Scrooge from feeling the pains of sympathy and compassion. The Nadala origins are uncertain but usually cited to be related with the Montseny and Pedraforca mountains in Catalonia (by the counties of Osona and Girona). As quite a few have references to mythological events and powers, some authors claim that they contain part of the religion that was present in the territory before Christianity arrived as it was kept alive in these mountainous regions. It is not clear whether the word carol derives from the French "carole" or the Latin "carula" meaning a circular dance. How many times have I seen a version of A Christmas Carol? Probably too many times to count, but I can try:
Many English Christmas carols have their origins in the Medieval Mystery Plays of the 16th century, and the Coventry Carol is no exception. The Christmas cynic says that the season is hypocritical, and that even those people who volunteer, give money, and donate food and gifts only do so once a year.Before carol singing in places like churches became popular, there were sometimes official carol singers called 'Waits'. These were bands of people led by important local leaders (such as council leaders) who had the only power in the towns and villages to take money from the public (if others did this, they were sometimes charged as beggars!). They were called 'Waits' because they sang on Christmas Eve (This was sometimes known as 'watchnight' or 'waitnight' because of the shepherds were watching their sheep when the angels appeared to them.), when the Christmas celebrations began. Charles Wesley wrote texts for at least three Christmas carols, of which the best known was originally entitled "Hark! How All the Welkin Rings", later edited to " Hark! the Herald Angels Sing". [15] In the 13th century, in France, Germany, and particularly, Italy, under the influence of Francis of Assisi, a strong tradition of popular Christmas songs in regional native languages developed. [3] Christmas carols in English first appear in a 1426 work of John Awdlay, a Shropshire chaplain, who lists twenty five "caroles of Cristemas", probably sung by groups of ' wassailers', who went from house to house. [4] The songs now known specifically as carols were originally communal songs sung during celebrations like harvest tide as well as Christmas. It was only later that carols began to be sung in church, and to be specifically associated with Christmas. A Christmas Carol (2009). An animated film made by Disney. A reasonably faithful adaptation, with many direct quotations and stars like Carrey, Oldman and Firth performing voice acting. Remarkable special effects and action scenes that not necessarily go well with the book. Recommendable mostly for children, and adults with a child at heart that don’t mind going a bit off script.
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