Christmas Music 2022

This page supplements the article about Christmas Music in the December 2022 issue of the Elmdon Gazette.  A short video featuring short extracts of the carols mentioned in the article can be found below  - or you can go to my You Tube channel here:- YouTube.com/@grahamrhknight . Each example is only 1 minute long so the whole movie is less than 20 minutes. It includes a bonus track at the end - so a final treat if you watch/listen to the whole thing. If you have access to Amazon music you can find all the tracks in full in my playlist there:- Amazon Christmas music tracks.  Alternatively go to the next page on this site: Playlist

When I was asked to write an article about Christmas Music for the December edition of the Gazette I thought "I don't know anything about Christmas Music". Then I remembered advice I received many years ago - "...if you don't understand something write a book about it...". This counterintuitive statement has served me well over the years and so this little article emerged. Bach's Christmas Oratorio has always made a great impression on me - one of the pinnacles of his enormous output of wonderful music. Then I remembered that, way back in the 1970s, a friend introduced me to the wonderful carol arrangements by Peter Knight and I thought "I doubt many people will have heard them" so I have included the best. A bit of research led me to a short history of carols themselves; to the more recent notion of the Christmas No. 1; to the jolly Christmas songs that accompany  every shopping trip in December and to some of the earliest carols that we still enjoy today.

There are many things I haven't covered in the article as space is always limited and there is so much more that could be written but I hope I have managed to tie together the many forms of Christmas Music - and provide a little Christmas cheer as well. The Gazette article is below the video.