The Stories Behind Your Favorite Christmas Carols

We sing them every year. We know most of the words (or at least the first verse). But most of us have no idea where our favorite Christmas carols came from.

The stories behind them are better than you'd think. There's a fight between two famous preachers, a guitar in a tiny Austrian church, and a grieving poet in the middle of the Civil War.

Let's look at a few of them.

The first Christmas carol

Before any of these songs existed, Christmas already had a soundtrack. The very first Christmas carol was sung by angels:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" (Luke 2:14, ESV)

And they weren't the only ones singing. Luke's account of Jesus' birth is full of songs. Mary sings when she visits Elizabeth (Luke 1:46–55). Zechariah sings when John the Baptist is born (Luke 1:68–79). Old Simeon sings when he holds the baby Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:29–32).

From the very beginning, the right response to Jesus' birth was music. Every carol since then is just joining in.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

If this one sounds a little like a medieval chant, that's because it basically is.

The words go back to the "O Antiphons," short prayers sung in churches during the last week before Christmas. Each one calls Jesus by a different Old Testament title: Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Dayspring, King of the Nations, and Emmanuel. The antiphons themselves are more than a thousand years old, and the melody traces back to a French manuscript from the 1400s.

In 1851, an English pastor named John Mason Neale translated it, and the version we sing took off from there.

What makes it special is that it's an Advent song. It's sung from the point of view of God's people waiting in the dark, longing for the Messiah to come. That's why it feels so heavy until you hit the chorus: "Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel."

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

This one started with a different first line, and an edit the writer didn't love.

In 1739, Charles Wesley (brother of John Wesley and one of the most prolific hymn writers ever) published a "Hymn for Christmas-Day." It opened like this:

"Hark, how all the welkin rings,
Glory to the King of kings!"

"Welkin" is an old word for the heavens. Not exactly catchy.

In 1753, the famous preacher George Whitefield, Wesley's friend and fellow revivalist, reprinted the hymn and changed the opening to "Hark! the herald angels sing, / Glory to the new-born King." Wesley wasn't happy about people editing his hymns. But Whitefield's version stuck.

The tune came even later, and from an unlikely place. In 1840, the composer Felix Mendelssohn wrote a piece celebrating Gutenberg's printing press. He actually said it would never work with sacred words. In 1856, an English organist named William Cummings ignored that (or didn't know about it) and set Wesley's hymn to Mendelssohn's music.

The result? One of the most-sung Christmas carols in the world, and one of the most theologically rich: "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; / Hail the incarnate Deity."

Joy to the World

Here's a fun one to drop at your next Christmas party: "Joy to the World" wasn't written as a Christmas song.

In 1719, the English pastor Isaac Watts published a book of the Psalms rewritten to point to Jesus. "Joy to the World" was his take on Psalm 98, which calls all creation to sing because "he comes to judge the earth" (Psalm 98:9, ESV).

Read the lyrics closely and you'll notice there's no manger, no shepherds, no baby. It's about Jesus the King, ruling the whole world. In a lot of ways, it's as much about his second coming as his first.

The tune came over a century later, when American music teacher Lowell Mason arranged it in 1839.

And don't miss the third verse. It echoes the curse from Genesis 3, when thorns first sprang up from the ground:

"No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found."

That's the whole gospel in four lines.

Silent Night

The most famous Christmas carol in the world was first played on a guitar.

In 1816, a young Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr wrote a six-verse poem called "Stille Nacht." Two years later, he was serving at St. Nicholas Church (yes, named after that Nicholas) in the small village of Oberndorf. A few days before Christmas, he asked his friend Franz Xaver Gruber, a local schoolteacher and organist, to write a melody for it, one that could be played on guitar.

On Christmas Eve 1818, after Midnight Mass, the two men sang it together for the first time, with Mohr playing guitar.

Why guitar instead of the organ? You'll often hear that the organ was broken, maybe from flooding or even mice. It's a great story, but no one knows for sure.

What we do know is that the song spread from village to village, then country to country. An Episcopal priest named John Freeman Young gave us the English version in 1859. And on Christmas Eve 1914, during World War I, soldiers in the trenches reportedly sang it to each other across the battlefield during the famous Christmas truce.

One simple song about a baby asleep in heavenly peace, and in places along the front, men at war stopped shooting.

O Holy Night

This carol came from about the least likely team you could imagine.

In 1847, a parish priest in the French town of Roquemaure asked a local wine merchant and poet, Placide Cappeau, to write a Christmas poem. Cappeau wasn't known for being religious, but he wrote "Minuit, Chrétiens" ("Midnight, Christians"). The opera composer Adolphe Adam set it to music, and it was sung at Midnight Mass that year.

It became hugely popular in France, though some church leaders later turned against it because of Cappeau's politics. (You may hear that Adam was Jewish and that's why the church objected. That one appears to be a myth.)

The English version came from John Sullivan Dwight, an American music critic and passionate abolitionist, around 1855. Dwight translated it pretty freely, and the third verse in particular carried his convictions:

"Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease."

Those words were sung in America just before the Civil War. A Christmas carol, preaching that Jesus came to break chains.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

This might be the most honest Christmas carol ever written.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the most famous poet in America. Then, in the summer of 1861, his wife Fanny's dress caught fire at home. Longfellow tried to put out the flames with his own body and was badly burned, but Fanny died the next day. That Christmas, he wrote in his journal about how sad all holidays had become.

The Civil War had just begun. In 1863, his oldest son Charles ran off to join the Union army without his father's blessing. That December, Longfellow got a telegram: Charles had been severely wounded in battle.

On Christmas Day 1863 (some sources say 1864), with his son home recovering and the nation tearing itself apart, Longfellow heard the church bells ringing and wrote a poem called "Christmas Bells." It doesn't pretend everything is fine:

"And in despair I bowed my head;
'There is no peace on earth,' I said;
'For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!'"

But the poem doesn't end there:

"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.'"

It was set to music in 1872. If you're walking into this Christmas carrying grief, this is the carol for you. Christmas doesn't ask you to pretend. It just reminds you that God hasn't gone anywhere.

The bottom line

Look at who wrote these songs: medieval monks, a Methodist revivalist, a pastor rewriting the Psalms, a village priest with a guitar, a wine merchant and an abolitionist, a grieving poet in wartime.

Different centuries, different countries, very different lives. But they all ended up singing about the same thing: God came down.

So this year, when you're singing along in the car or at the candlelight service, slow down and listen to the words. These aren't just seasonal songs. They're some of the best theology a lot of people will hear all year, set to music.

The angels started the song. We get to keep singing it.