What is your favourite Carol?

[antelopevalley]

I love Hark the Herald Angels sing. Very rousing and uplifting.
You?

In the Bleak Mid Minter

O little town of Bethlehem as it reminds me of being in school. I also like the one that goes "I saw three ships come sailing in". Love loads of them really though.

Away in a manager

I go carolling regularly with a brass band. The one carol everyone loves to play the most is Coventry Carol. The melody, harmonies and chord movements are just superb. A tune of deep emotional resonance.
It doesn't get played out very often because of the words- it's about the massacre of the innocents. It baffles me that a carol can be about this, but it's very ancient, dates back to the 16th century, so there must be a religious reason for this.

Good King Wenceslas.

amp.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/coventry-carol-lyrics-meaning-history/
Ah, found it. Interesting

Oh SqueakyDinosaur thanks for the link to In Dulci Jubilo, I'm an alto and it was always one of my favourites to sing. Love, love, love it. Eight parts, glorious.

My absolute favourite is In the Bleak Midwinter, the Harold Darke version. I can't sing it any more as it makes me cry.

I also adore The Three Kings with the chorale prelude (? Is that the right expression? It's been many years since I sang in church) How Brightly Shines the Morning Star

I Saw Three Ships - the words are lovely and conjure up all sorts of wonderful images in your head. ❤️

Coventry Carol - I love those really old ones. Sung it with my choir last week for first time in ages, was so glad to do that again. I'm Jewish, but I do like a good carol!

Oh holy night - very emotional

From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable.
It’s very religious (obviously!) and I’m not, but something about it I just love!

Slient Night and the Cowboy Carol

@Allergictoironing Ahh a fellow appreciator of my favourite Christmas song! I find a lot of people have never heard of it but it's been my favourite forever.
I like this version:

In the bleak midwinter, makes me blub.

My lovely mum loved John Rutter carols too.

Once in royal David's city is my favourite.

Christmas really starts on Christmas Eve night once all the children are asleep DH and I watch carols from kings which always starts with that song and it's just beautiful!

I agree Zwellers. It’s my least favourite carol and I switch the radio off or leave the room when it comes on. Part of this is because it gives me the most horrible ear worm that rattles around in my head for hours and hours after hearing it.

In the bleak midwinter. The Holst version. Although the Darke version is lovely in its own right

It was my mums favourite and I'm instantly taken back to midnight mass as a child. In my memory, it's frosty and starry outside and I'm holding my mums hand in the candlelit church. Makes me cry.

I'm not an O Holy Night fan, or Silent Night, or Away in a Manger. I find them all a bit twee, and the first two feature in too many Hallmark films where the heroine just suddenly starts singing at the Christmas festival after no warm up or warning.

On Christmas Night by James Burton is really beautiful - it's got 'How brightly shines the morning star' as the part underneath, like The Three Kings by Cornelius. He conducted it when we sang it, and I think he said he wrote it for his goddaughter, which I thought was especially lovely.

Such a lovely thread and then people have to make it a little bitchy. So sad. Classic Mumsnet 🙄

She asked everyone's favourite carol. You don't need to dissect other people's choices and have a good bitch about it. Bore off

I think the Coventry Carol was part of a mystery play originally, which explains the subject matter. It would have been one of several songs telling a story. I agree it is a very beautiful piece of music.

I'm with the OP. My favourite is Hark the Herald - that last verse with the descent is just pure joy!

I love them all. Cry all the way through a carol service. I am so embarrassing

Calypso Carol - every year the same!

Calypso Carol may well be the proper name for the one I know as the Cowboy Carol.

O Holy Night sang by a good singer blows my mind every time.

This is a lovely thread, thank-you. Every year we stress about all sorts of stuff but there is something very calming when it comes to the carols.

"See Amid the Winter Snow"

There's a line in that that chokes me every time - 'Sacred infant, all divine / What a tender love was thine / Thus to come, from highest bliss / Down to such a world as this'. I've never sung it without a lump in my throat!