Christmas Carols- An Integral Part of
Christmas Festival
'Joy to the world the lord has come'. Yes this musical note will
remind you that once again is the time of the year when the vault of
the church is filled with the heavenly echoes of the caroling
sounds. As the Christmas season has arrived to praise and sing the
Lord's name and to hail for the glory of his reign. Caroling is the
best way to get into the Christmas mood and spirit. There's song in
every lips murmuring the hymns of joy and love of god. Lilting
melodies floating in the air tells you that the season of love and
affection is here to make you feel the real spirit of Christmas.
Christmas carols have always been an integral part of this festival.
It creates the ambience for the celebration. Christmas without
carols cannot be thought of. It is one aspect of the holiday season
that never fails to lift the spirit.
But history tells us that carols have no connection with Christmas
or even with Christianity for that matter. The melodies were
originally written to accompany an ancient dance form known, as the
'Circle Dance'. The dance form was mainly associated with fertility
rites and pagan festivities in the medieval Celtic countries of
Europe. The Christian Churches, which were established in these
areas, got familiar with the melodies and rhythms of carols and they
easily found their way into Christian meetings and celebrations. The
songs had such polytheistic and pagan roots, that the Churches were
not comfortable about them for a long time. In fact, in the
mid-Seventh Century the Church Council explicitly forbade Christians
to sing carols, and it continued till the Twelfth Century but with
the passage of time a kind of renaissance took palace and the carols
were fused with the folk songs that were the Pop songs of the day -
the songs that were whistled or sung by ordinary people. It is said
that Saint Francis of Assisi is the person who brought the change.
The priests in St. Francis' developed a different style of religious
folk song called a lauda. The tunes of the songs were so catchy that
it soon spread across the Fourteenth Century Europe. The music
evolved with time and became so popular that even today carols are
so much a part of Christmas celebration some seven centuries later.
