Archive for December 2024

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The Night Before Christmas

Here we are, finally, three days after I should have written this post. I apologise for the delay, faithful readers. I might have been able to make an excuse for Christmas Eve, as I was extremely busy, however, no reasonable excuse can be concocted for the following days. I was merely lazy. All that aside, here we

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The Second Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

Today we return to wassailing, which we touched on briefly when I discussed the apple tree carol earlier. "Wassail" comes from the old Norse for "good health," and was the practice of going about town with spiced ale and drinking the good health of the people and things you encountered at each house. The wassail bowl was

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The Third Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

Today's will be short. Technically this is yesterday's. Hush. We shall pretend it was not posted today. You know this carol, I hope. Happily, I believe it has become much more well known in the last five or ten years meaning it requires little introduction, and even less commentary. I wanted to share a Christmas carol for

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The Fourth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

There are problems when one is trying to sing a carol written sometime in the 1600s, in a different language than the original. Tunes are preserved far more easily, I have discovered, and, with today's carol, I finally gave up trying to find something on youtube that sang either the original Catalan words, or a semi-accurate translation.

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The Fifth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

This is one of those carols I might have shared five or more years ago. It is one that, in my zealous thunder-puppy years, I would have added to my roster that contained no songs written after the 1800s. I remember those. It took age to discover that good things had actually been created after that point.

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The Sixth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

Today's carol has, at best, hazy origins. The first known publishing date was in 1926, but the author is unknown, and no one is certain when, exactly, it was written, though most believe it was sometime in the early 1800s. Beyond that, next to nothing is known. This is why, my friends, when you scribble a brilliant

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The Seventh Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

Today's post will be very short. I have too many things to do today, and not enough hours in the day to do them. This is a carol I wanted to share last year, but couldn't find it on Youtube. So, this year, I elected to put it on Youtube myself. For better or for worse, I

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The Eighth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

What does Jesus have to with apples? Well, everything if we're talking about "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree," a carol published in 1761 generally attributed to a Rev. Richard Hutchins who I'd never heard of before now. It is set to a beautiful tune by Elizabeth Poston and is one of those ubiquitous carols which is associated

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The Ninth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

I love how I never seem to run out of traditional carols to share. Today's is already a favourite of mine because it is a traditional Scottish carol. This lilting song takes a unique approach in the form of questions and answers, first asking why or who each aspect or person of the Christmas story is present,

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The Tenth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

In the 1300's Julian of Norwich claimed to have had a series of heavenly visions in one of which Jesus appeared to her and gave her assurance regarding the presence of evil in the world. He is said to have ended with these now iconic words: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all

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The Elventh Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

I have loved today's carol for a long time, but gone back and forth about the rightness of it. After all, if we are to preach the gospel in it's original form and not make substitutions to cater to different cultures, how is this an exception. You might guess from the photo by now that I'm talking

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The Twelfth Day to Christmas

By Christianna Hellwig with 1 Comments

Good afternoon, friends! It is that time of year again, already. What concerns me, however, is not the passage of time, but the fact that the last post on this blog was my last Christmas series post from last year. I have not posted at all in 2024 until now. What that means for blog posts in

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