A Traditional Christmas

Christmas has almost come and gone for another year. We've had four Sundays of Advent and six or eight weeks of Christmas music in the malls and on television and radio. I've attended, played for, or led singing at a variety of parties and programs in the past couple of weeks. Once again, I can only marvel at the variety of music that makes up our musical Christmas celebrations year after year:

• That core group of sacred carols and hymns: "Silent Night," "Joy to the World," "Angels We Have Heard on High," "O Come, All Ye Faithful," O Little Town of Bethlehem," "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear," "The First Noel," "What Child Is This," and "Away In a Manger."
• The second tier of carols and hymns, less popular, less known: "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," "In the Bleak Midwinter," "Infant Holy," "Love Came Down at Christmas," "The Friendly Beasts," and "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice."
• Songs that have entered the congregational repertoire from various choral sources: "O Holy Night," "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light," "Savior of the Nations, Come," and "On this Day Earth Shall Ring."
• Ethnic and folk songs: "Go, Tell It on the Mountain," "Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow," "The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy," "Twas in the Moon of Wintertime," "De Tierra Lejana Venimos," "En El Fro Invernal," and "Nio Lindo."
• New congregational hymns and songs: "That Boy-Child of Mary," "One Holy Night in Bethlehem," "Star-Child," "Carol of the Epiphany," and "Emmanuel, Emmanuel."
• Choral works, arrangements, and original compositions, new and old, such as Handel's Messiah.
• Sacred solos, new and old.
• Instrumental music of all kinds: piano and organ works, handbells, brass, orchestra.
• Santa and Rudolph songs.
• Secular general Christmas songs: "White Christmas," "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "Silver Bells."
• Winter songs: "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," "Sleigh Ride," "Jingle Bells," "Let It Snow."

For every year of my life, these have made up my musical Christmas celebrations in worship, in concert, in choir and Sunday school class parties, United Methodist Women's meetings, at nursing homes, shut-in caroling, and singing with family and friends at home. While titles may vary, I suspect the musical experience is similar for many western Christians. It is our tradition.

I pulled out a 150-year old Methodist hymnal to see what Christmas hymns and carols people were singing in 1850. We would expect it to be quite different from today, since they had no radio, television, CDs, IPODs, movies, Broadway shows, Muzak, Internet, or shopping malls. As I looked through Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849), I was reminded of just how modern our "traditional" Christmas celebrations really are. Of all the Christmas music listed above, none of it not a single title is included in the 1849 Methodist hymnal. None of the above-mentioned core group of sacred carols and hymns is included in the 1857 edition of this hymnal, and none of the tunes with which we are so familiar are included.

The 1849 hymnal contains fifteen Christmas hymns, five of which are included in modern hymnals:

• "Angels from the Realms of Glory"
• "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning"
• "Hail to the Lord's Anointed"
• "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing"
• "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night"

Only "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night" was matched with the same tune (CHRISTMAS) used in our present hymnal. Wesley's "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" used HENDON, which is used in our hymnal with "Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know." All of the other Christmas hymns used texts and tunes most likely unfamiliar to most of us today.

So what constituted a typical, traditional Christmas musical experience for worshipers and revelers in 1850? That will take additional research, but it is true that the Christmas of 150 years ago was certainly quite different from the Christmas of today. We owe so much of our modern Christmas experience, including the reveling, the music, the gifting, and the sentimentality, to the impact of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Thomas Nast's creation of the image of the modern Santa Claus, the rise of American commercialism, and the development of technology. Only Dickens's A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, was in existence in 1850. The observance and celebration of Christmas in 1850 was a smaller, personal, private, and individual matter. The culture and technology of 1850 helped to determine the kind of Christmas the people experienced, just as the culture and technology of 2005 do today.