You can find lists of great and favorite Christmas songs everywhere, and whose list is definitive will depend on who you trust. This morning, I looked up Parade’s list of 50 best and compared it to a list of 30 from ClassicFM. You might think Parade’s list leans toward pop songs, but I found a 46% overlap between the lists out of a possible 60%. I wish these songs were what you could expect on the radio or while shopping.
Parade’s first 10 (with ClassicFM’s number in parentheses), not intended ranking priority:
Silent night (2)
O Come All Ye Faithful (6)
12 Days of Christmas
Do You Hear What I Hear
The Little Drummer Boy
Joy to The World (13)
The First Noel (29)
Jingle Bells
Deck the Halls
O Christmas Tree (this one also made it on the list at #43 as “O Tannenbaum”)
That leans toward popular fare, and it’s a good, fun list. “O Come All Ye Faithful” is one of the best carols of all time. You could sing it year round in English or Latin. On “Silent Night,” ClassicFM notes, “During the Christmas truce of 1914 during World War I, the carol was sung simultaneously by English and German troops.”
The tree of life my soul hath seen, Laden with fruit and always green: The trees of nature fruitless be Compared with Christ the apple tree.
Seraphic Fire performs “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” by Elizabeth Poston
This traditional Christmas carol would fit well during apple season, in September or October when many of us look for cider at a farmers market or visit orchards to pick or buy Jonagolds, Mitzus, and Arkansas Blacks off the trees around us.
So it was that each autumn we ate apples until we grew tired of them. And when it was clear that we’d eat no more, he turned to pies. Late into the night, night after night, he peeled apples relentlessly, while my bemused mother baked on and on. Our kitchen became a pie factory, and by the end of the season there could be eighty or a hundred pies in the freezer.
“Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” has been found in print from 1761 and possibly a bit earlier, attributed to Rev. Richard Hutchins, a clergyman of Northamptonshire, England.
