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!

Cranbrook or Lyngham for while shepherds watched, every time!

I agree about tunes being too high as well. Have they been revised upwards because I'm sure they were never so high when I was younger?

Ohhh that video is wonderful, @TheBitchOfTheVicar - thank you!

Joy to the World is not being done right if it doesn't sound joyful ... just needs a decent tempo and it sings itself.
In the Bleak Midwinter is just beautiful .... both versions are nice but the Harold Darke version is spellbinding.

I find most hymns and carols very droney. The organ is an awful instrument and I find I either have to sing too low or too high to be in tune. Christian church music rarely sounds joyful.

I HATE The sodding Calypso Carol! The only time I ever hear it is at the school carol concert, but even that is too often. The worst time ever was when the projector screen showing the words stopped working and they sang the same verse over and over and over and over...

My absolute favourite is The Shepherds Farewell. It’s beautiful but very hard to sing so you rarely hear it.

Dollywilde - I LOVE to massacre the descant! - it's one of my favourite bits of Christmas. I used to be able to sing them well 20 odd years ago, but not any more. I also used to play the 'cello so I find myself swapping down to the 'cello part when I can't remember the descant bits. Completely useless at the main melody. It is best not to stand near me at carol concerts.

The organ is a wonderful instrument though it is perhaps fair to say that many organ players are piano players who have been roped in to play the organ which is an entirely different beast.

In answer to an earlier post about Carol's from Kings. I was very sad that Stephen Cleobury died. The service under Daniel Hyde seemed much more traditional (perhaps he was trying a little hard to please - I don't think Cleobury had that problem for many many years) and some of the carols were at a significantly slower tempo - some of which I liked and some I didn't. I also noticed that he favoured one boy treble whereas Cleobury seemed to spread it round more. And only one organ scholar where usually two. Maybe this was coincidental.

The Shepherds Farewell and Three Kings From Persian Lands Afar were my absolute favourites, but this year they’ve been moved down the list by Chariots by John Kirkpatrick - a wonderful folk carol.
While Shepherds Watched and The First Nowell are my least favourites too - dull, dull, dull.

The Philip Stopford arrangement of the Coventry Carol is, to me, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever. I saw it performed at St Martins in the Field one Christmas and it remains one of the best Christmas moments of my life.

In the Bleak Midwinter can bore off though!

@sashh - a carol is a song with a repeating refrain. It wasn't originally specifically related to Christmas or even religious at all, so it's nothing to do with symbolism. But 12 Days can't be a carol because it doesn't have a repeating chorus.

Love the Rutter video, thank you!

We have a new Director of music so had lots of different things this year. Different version of Ding Dong where the sopranos had the tune and the rest of us had to ding and ding at various points.There were about eight dongs at one point. That was fun to learn. We also sang a new one called ‘Born is the Light of the World’ which had some tricky bits and we could not get it right with the organ so we sang it round the piano and the congregation loved it. They think we should have candles next year

Love the Rutter link! I used to find his stuff very boring but then we sang the Gloria and the Magnificat and it did convince me that he can write more interesting music. The Candlelight Carol is a bit of a guilty pleasure!

Yes to the First Nowell and Good King Wenceslas being dirges. And I've sung 12 Days of Christmas far too often this Christmas. That said I quite like the setting of - the piano stops it dragging, the soprano lines are quite fun when you get used to them, particularly the descant at the end!

I think I know the Ding Dong Merrily version GrannyBags means - as a soprano it involved a lot of rehearsals sitting listening to the rest of the choir tripping over their tongues! Though I'm sure they feel the same about our descants.

I think my favourite this Christmas has been the Hadley - so beautiful!

All I have to add to this is a vote for 'Gabriel's message'. For those who know it, there is a line in the refrain which goes 'most highly favoured lady' but my dentist told me he always sings 'most highly flavoured gravy'....it's now impossible for me to hear it any other way!

rosebud5678 We used to sing ‘highly flavoured gravy’ in my primary school choir!

"While Shepherds watched" has more tunes than many other carols because the words were included at the back of the copies of the Book of Common Prayer when first sent out as compulsory, with only words, just after the Reformation, so people picked a tune which fitted. As for parodies - having taught in the wilder reaches of Deptford, I was frankly relieved when the little treasures confined themselves to socks...…..
Other well-worn paraphrases I came to loathe were "highly flavoured gravy" (Gabriel's Message) and "Hydom, Hydom, tickle my bum"
Another one I rather liked, as I found the tune a dirge, and the KS1 cherub was not trying to be funny, was "Got to keep on, bloody onwards" in "Little Donkey"
But my pet hate is "The Shepherd's Farewell" from L'Enfance du Christ" It seems designed to slip out of tune, and if by dint of fierce concentration the choir manage not to go flat, you still end up with a dirge, with no variation in the three verses to add any interest. Unfortunately, it is the all-time fave of one of our clergy, who other than that is a pleasant man....
Ding Dong Merrily on High was originally a dance tune, which explains a lot.

At the lessons and carols service I attended at our nearby school, the little boy doing the Gabriel reading actually did say, "Greetings, you who are highly flavoured," when he got to that part!

I adore Jesus Christ the Apple Tree - it's hardly ever sung and it's beautiful.

As a soprano I love Christmas carols because I get to have fun with the descants. I usually only use the top of my range when I'm singing in my kitchen

Why is it spelled 'nowell' now?! I noticed it at my daughter's school on the projector.

Oh, yes! Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is gorgeous. Though for me it always brings to mind the extremely anxious look on the face of the singer who was doing the solo of the first verse when I first heard it - she was coming down with a cold and you could see she was terrified she wouldn't manage it.

Cross post - @mirri, nowell is probably the older spelling?

Really? It was definitely noél when I was at school.

I'm just looking at a late medieval manuscript for the tune of a carol, and that has 'nowel'.

Noel will be more directly from French, so may have seemed more 'correct' to fancypants types later on.

Most carols and hymns are way too high for most people to sing. If you’re a woman you need to have a soprano voice.

I'm an alto and I often find singing the tenor part less traumatic all round. Not that the dog seems to mind, DP (non-singer, not musical, atheist) just looks at me as though I'm mad.