After the turn of midnight, on Christmas-eve, service is
performed in the churches, followed by singing carols to the harp.
Whilst the Christmas holidays continue, they are sung in like manner in
the houses; and there are carols especially adapted to be sung at the
doors of the houses by visitors before they enter. _Lffyr Carolan_,
or the Book of Carols, contains sixty-six for Christmas, and five summer
carols. _Blodengerdd Cymrii_, or the Anthology of Wales, contains
forty-eight Christmas carols, nine summer carols, three May carols, one
winter carol, one nightingale carol, and a carol to Cupid. On the
Continent, the custom of carolling at Christmas is almost universal.
During the last days of Advent, Calabrian minstrels enter Rome, and are
to be seen in every street, saluting the shrines of the Virgin mother
with their wild music, under the traditional notion of charming her
labour pains on the approaching Christmas."
Why do the Christmas carols of the present day differ from the carols of
earlier times?
Because the present carols were substituted, by those enemies of
innocent mirth, the Puritans, for the original carols, which were festal
chansons for enlivening the merriment of the Christmas celebrity; and
not such religious songs as are current at this day, with the common
people, under the same title.
Dr. Johnson, in a note on _Hamlet_, tells us, that the pious
chansons, a kind of Christmas carol, containing some Scripture history,
thrown into loose rhymes, were sung about the streets by the common
people, when they went at that season to beg alms.
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