To inwardly groan when I see these carols on the board

[SeasonallySnowyPeasant]

These are lovely carols when sung by a choir but a congregation / bunch of parents slogging through them is painful:

• Joy to the World
• The 12 Days of Christmas

Give me a sharp, snappy Hark, the Herald Angels Sing any day!

Mine is The First Nowell. Does it drone on or what?! Lazy lazy composer using the same tune for verse and chorus and soooo many verses. It’s like an endurance test!

I’m with you on the 12 Days of Fucking Christmas. I can’t bear it and it goes on and on and on until the crack of doom.

It's better than while shepherds watched, I always wanted to sing about socks.

Ah, I quite like The First Noel. It doesn’t require me to sing any ridiculously high notes!

Come to the manger. It's a Lovely bright carol but the way they sing it at my church it's just a dirge.

YANBU, especially about JTTW. The panto version of 12 days of Christmas with the bra that was meant to hold three is quite good though.

I play in a band and we have done a couple of open air (very well attended) Carol concerts. Our conductor makes sure we keep up a lively pace for everything and the audience don't really have a choice but to keep up with us so we make sure it doesn't descend in to a dirge.

Good King Wenceslas goes on a bit.

And oh yes, The Twelve Days can be a nightmare. Mainly because the navigation is tricky in our copies and it is easy to miscount and stick the 5 gold rings in the wrong place. Always relieved to get it out of the way. The audience do seem to love it though.

We had to sing JTTW twice in one morning at church last week. It’s not the slightest bit joyful and it goes on forever. Whoever thought that was a good idea?!

5foot5 I like your conductor’s style. Droning through carols at a sedate pace is the pits.

I hate away in a manger - done to death,
And in the bleak midwinter. Now that does drone on. And she managed to run out of words by the end of the first verse: snow had fallen, snow on snow, snoooowww on snow.

At least it's not Away in a bloody Manger...

Silent night is my worst. Bloody yon virgin.

In the Bleak Midwinter is very, very ... bleak.

We did we three kings this morning. At the pace of it, they might just have got there by the end of lent

I like the bleak ones: In the Bleak Midwinter, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. They’re all winter yay and lovely. It’s the ones that are supposed to be all bright and cheerful that go on forever in an awful dirge that are hideous.

We three kings of Orient are, strumming on a rock guitar, ever singing, always swinging, la la la

O Come All ye Faithful has too many verses - especially on Christmas morning

I do quite like the other tune to Away in a Manger (page 3 in CFC1).

O Come All ye Faithful has too many verses - especially on Christmas morning

How many do you sing?
I only know 3 verses (and 4 on Christmas day)

Me, the director of music and the organist have a full and frank conversation about which carols we love and which we really don't like in September. If we all loathe it and it is very popular it only appears once over all the services. If we can't agree (I hate JTTW with a passion but Dir Music loves it) we go into negotiation. This year we benched JTTW but added in God Rest Ye which was played at a cracking pace. It worked well.

Next year I'm cutting half the verses of Once in Royal. It goes on for ever.

6 with 7 on Christmas morning.
3/4 would be fine.

Totally agree, especially about Joy to the World which is too high for your average congregation. Ditto Ding Dong Merrily in High, which is lovely sung unaccompanied by a choir, but usually dire when performed by the general public.

I’m a choral singer and have grown to loathe the 12 Days of Christmas, as it’s normally done in a dire audience participation version at our Christmas gigs where the audience is divided into 12 sections to sing it, with accompanying actions. It takes bloody hours.

Dm hated "O Come all ye Faithful" she said it isn't really the faithful who come on Christmas day. She used to sing her own version starting with
"O Come all ye faithless, who come but once a year..." until df refused to stand with her, so she now protests by singing it in Latin.

I quite like JTTW, but I've never sung 12 days in Church.
What I do object to is going to church to find 1 carol on Christmas day and the rest songs you can sing the rest of the year. I want carols!

While Shepherds watched, the standard Anglican tune is dire. Much better if you sing it to the original (better known now as Ilkley Moor bah Tat) or the tune we used for Oh for 1000 Tongues to Sing. Theyfit it much better.

I saw three ships is good sung properly but most people don't seem to be able to.

12 Days of Christmas is not a carol. Gavel.

I think my least favourite for congregation singing is 'Wolcum Yole' (never works) or 'O Holy Night' (too much potential to go creakily flat).

@Witchend.

You are so right with both those as better tunes for 'While Shepherds watched.' Lyngham is my favourite hymn tune