O Come, O Come Emmanuel
I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite Christmas song, but O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is way up there. A close second is Silent Night, which my three-year-old calls Silent Goodnight and sings along with me many nights. Then again, I’m a terrible Christmas carol fanatic. I’m the guy who starts listening to them after Thanksgiving. I prefer the religious carols, and especially the more solemn variety, but I like the jingly secular ones as well especially now that I have kids. Anyone else have particular favorites?
You’ve picked one of my two favorites, with the other being “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming.” Crowding close behind are “We Three Kings,” “What Child is This,” and “O Holy Night.” Yeah, I’m a sucker for the solemn religious carols, too.Report
What Child is This is right up there in my top three for sure…Report
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is a beautiful tune. It is also not exactly a Christmas tune, but rather one for Advent.
Most moving Christmas tune for me is “O Holy Night”.Report
Good King Wenceslas has a warm spot in my heart.
I also enjoy The Holly and the Ivy though it strikes me as the most ADD carol, like, ever. It changes topics mid-sentence. Still, a lovely yuletide carol.Report
The Holly and the Ivy’s a great tune. My first two children are named Olivia and Ivy, making “The ‘Olly and the Ivy” our favorite Christmas song for a few years. Then we had a third child and couldn’t make it work anymore.Report
I’m all about ol’ King Wencelas.Report
Alex Chilton. Enough said. Listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPLsJI3gPDgReport
I hope this won’t ruin your love of the carol, but two years ago as the Obama inauguration grew near, I penned the following:
O Rahm, O Rahm Emanuel!
(Positive Liberty | December 21, 2008 | D.A. Ridgely)
O Rahm, O Rahm Emanuel!
Come and give jobs to Liberals
That wait for their appointments here
Until Barack Obama appears.
Employed! Employed! Emanuel
Shall find thee work, oh Liberal!
O Come, thou Rahm with Jesse’s boy,
Thy Democratic colleagues to employ.
After two terms in the wilderness
It’s time that situation to address.
Employed! Employed! Emanuel
Shall find thee work, oh Liberal!
O Come, thou Chief of Staff and appoint
On behalf of The One we did anoint.
Disperse those NeoCons from our sight
And make some office space for us forthright.
Employed! Employed! Emanuel
Shall find thee work, oh Liberal!
O Come, Barack’s right, no, make that left hand!
And try now to avoid the witness stand.
And if you must swear, watch for the press.
They were your friends, soon they’ll be your distress.
Employed! Employed! Emanuel
Shall find thee work, oh Liberal!
O Rahm, O Rahm Emanuel!
We want you to know we all think you’re swell.
We’d like you even better if you
Would pick some juicy plums for us, too!
Employed! Employed! Emanuel
Shall find thee work at last, oh Liberal!
Report
Ace, DAR.Report
Solemn religious carols? How about Coventry Carol?Report
What Child is This. Also God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Don’t know why.
I tried to make an iTunes collection of Christmas carols a few years back. I wanted all the traditional carols. A lot of them were pretty standard, Mormom-Tabernacle-Choirish performances, but I went with interesting renditions when I found them. I recommend the Barenaked Ladies’ “I Saw Three Ships,” Johnny Cash’s “Silent Night,” Crash Test Dummies “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and Sufjan Stevens “Away in a Manger” and “Joy to the World.” Also a bluegrass instrumental version of the “Carol of the Bells” on an album called Christmas Grass.Report
So many precious Christmas memories I have.
I rely upon our rituals–chief among them, decorating our tree and singing/playing carols–to nudge these memories out of the dustier corners of my mind. The nudging is an evocative, often teary-eyed event for me, through which my now adult kids simply hug me and roll their eyes when they think I’m not looking. (All in all, it’s a sweet deal for me.)
So it’s kinda difficult to detach the memories and pick a fav.
But if cornered, I’d have to go with Carol of the Bells, both piano
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYrOMK1aDA&feature=related
and choir versions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSlMOzaZLnM&feature=related
Close runner-up: any elegant arrangement of O Holy Night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyrqUWfsa4&feature=relatedReport
My best-loved Christmas carol is “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” with the wording used in one of my favorite CDs:
It came upon a midnight clear
That glorious song of old
From angel bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels thing.
Now with the wars of sin and strife
The world has suffered long
And ‘neath the angels’ strain has rolled
Two thousand years of wrong.
And man at war with man hears not
The love song angels bring.
Oh, hush the noise and cease the strife
To hear the angels sing.
And lo, the days are hasting on
By prophet bards foretold
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the age of gold.
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling
And all the world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.Report