ICYMI this week ... and Christmas carols!

A weekly round-up of headlines from the Daily News podcast

Dec 21, 2024

Two years ago, I wrote a feature for The Walrus about the history of Christmas carols. From the sacred to the profane, carols were yesterday’s pop music, and sung not just for Christmas, and not just for the birth of Baby Jesus, but to celebrate the seasons changing, the harvest, other religious holidays like Easter and generally, just to party.

The Walrus was intriqued by my pitch and let me write something that included something like 21 carols, from Mariah Carey to Elvis Costello. You can read it here.

Many of the stories that I highlight are from the Oxford Book of Carols, an incredible anthology of the best English (and some Flemish, German, Dutch, French) carols that had been collected over the course of the 50 year prior to like 1928. One song I didn’t mention was Good King Wenceslas. In the Oxford Book of Carols, the note explains that this song has a nonsensical narrative but a wonderful tune; a tune that is usually associated with a Spring carol. The editors muse perhaps this one wont stand the test of time. The tune may but the words probably won’t.

Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I shall see him dine
When we bear them thither.
Page and monarch, forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude winds wild lament
And the bitter weather

Indeed, strange. But not too bad for Dec. 26 in Quebec City — the Feast of Stephen, as the song goes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the carols I mention, or maybe also carols I don’t mention (of which there are MANY) and, as the headlines from this past week are below the photo lower down of Percy Dearmer in 1890, I’ll leave you with this:

Percy Dearmer was one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement. I mention him in the story. He, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the three editors of the first Oxford Book of Carols. A socialist, this is how Vaughan Williams described Dearmer the first time they met: “I knew his name vaguely as a parson who invited tramps to sleep in his drawing-room; but he had not come to see me about tramps. He went straight to the point and asked me to edit the music of a hymn book."

Anyone who loves hymns owes a great deal of thanks to Dearmer. He is the one who asked Gustav Holst to write In The Bleak Midwinter, arguably the absolutely best Christmas hymn that has ever been written.

Anyway, here’s Dearmer and this photo is linked to a great article about Dearmer and his former church.

Before I finish here, I just want to mention that Dearmer also wrote He Who Would Valiant Be. Here is a version that probably would have horrified him. The metre is off so it’s not just horrifying because the most inbred family on the planet is trying to keep rythm with the organ. It’s not a Christmas carol but whatever.