Christmas carols for kids: the stories behind 10 carols

Most carols were not written by famous composers. A village schoolteacher wrote one. A wine merchant wrote the words of another. One began as a game, and one is not about Christmas at all. Here are the stories behind 10 carols, with one thing to listen for in each.

Tell one story a day in December, and then sing the carol.

Carols from a village and a pageant

1. “Silent Night.” Joseph Mohr was a young priest in Austria. Franz Gruber was a schoolteacher who played the organ. On Christmas Eve in 1818, in the village of Oberndorf, the two men sang their new carol for the first time. Gruber wrote the tune, and a guitar played along. People say the church organ was broken that night. Nobody knows for sure. Listen for: the gentle rocking rhythm, in the style of a lullaby. To play it, read Silent Night: letter notes.

2. “We Three Kings.” John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote the words and the music in 1857, for a Christmas pageant in New York City. Each king has his own verse, and each verse names his gift: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Listen for: the dark sound of the verse and the bright sound of the chorus.

3. “O Holy Night.” Placide Cappeau was a wine merchant in France who wrote poems. In 1847, the composer Adolphe Adam set one of his poems to music. Adam is the same man who wrote the ballet Giselle. Listen for: the long climb to the highest note, near the end.

Carols that were something else first

4. “Jingle Bells.” James Lord Pierpont published it in Boston in 1857, under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh.” The words never mention Christmas. They are about a ride in a sleigh. In December 1965, two astronauts on the Gemini 6 spacecraft played it on a tiny harmonica and a set of bells. It is known as the first song broadcast from space. Listen for: the same note seven times in a row at the start of the chorus. To play it, read Jingle Bells: letter notes.

5. “Joy to the World.” Isaac Watts wrote the words in England in 1719. He based them on a psalm, and he did not write them for Christmas. More than 100 years later, the American musician Lowell Mason gave them the tune we sing. Listen for: the first line, which is a whole scale going down. To play it, read Joy to the World: letter notes.

6. “Deck the Halls.” The tune is an old Welsh song for New Year’s Eve, called “Nos Galan.” The English words were added in 1862. Listen for: the “fa la la,” which is there for the fun of singing it.

7. “Good King Wenceslas.” The tune comes from a song about spring, printed in 1582. In 1853, John Mason Neale wrote new words about a kind ruler. Wenceslas was a real duke who lived more than 1,000 years ago in Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. The Feast of Stephen in the first line is December 26. Listen for: the king and his page, who take turns in the middle verses.

8. “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” It was printed in England in 1780 as a memory game, with no music. Players took turns saying the list. Anyone who forgot a gift paid a small forfeit. The tune we sing was arranged in 1909 by Frederic Austin, who added the long, slow “five gold rings.” Listen for: how the song grows longer with every verse.

Carols with a tune by a composer

9. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Charles Wesley wrote the words in 1739. The tune is by Felix Mendelssohn. He wrote it in 1840 for a festival that honored the invention of the printing press. Fifteen years later, an English musician fitted the tune to Wesley’s words. Mendelssohn had died by then. He had said the tune would never suit sacred words. Read Mendelssohn for kids. Listen for: the strong, march-like beat.

10. “Carol of the Bells.” The Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych built it on a folk chant of four notes. His song was called “Shchedryk.” It was a New Year’s song about a swallow that flies into a house to promise a good year. A choir first sang it in Kyiv in 1916. The English words about bells were written in 1936. Listen for: the same four notes, which repeat from the first bar to the last.

Carols in classical music

Composers have borrowed carols for larger pieces.

• Leroy Anderson wove several into “A Christmas Festival” for orchestra. How many can your child name?
• Ralph Vaughan Williams used old English carols in his Fantasia on Christmas Carols. Read Vaughan Williams for kids.
• Benjamin Britten set old carol poems to new music in A Ceremony of Carols, for high voices and a harp. Read Britten for kids.

Things to do together

One a day. Tell one story at breakfast and sing the carol at bedtime.

Carol or not? Read the words of “Jingle Bells,” “Deck the Halls,” and “Joy to the World.” Ask which ones mention Christmas.

Play the memory game. Say “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a list, with no tune, the way it was first played. Each player adds one gift.

Four notes. Play “Carol of the Bells” and tap the four-note pattern each time you hear it.

Find them on a map. The 10 stories touch Austria, the United States, France, England, Wales, Bohemia, and Ukraine. Find each place.

Print and play

Mark each carol on the December listening calendar. A child at the piano can start with easy Christmas piano songs for kids.

For orchestra music for the season, read Christmas classical music for kids. For more ways to listen at home, see how to introduce kids to classical music.