OT Advent Calendar Day 19: The Holly & The Ivy
Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.
Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.
Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Today’s tune is “The Holly and the Ivy.”
Today’s song shows great evidence of being endemic for quite a while before it was collected and standardized. This standardization happened at the beginning of the 20th century with Cecil Sharp’s collection of the song and then the publication of his English Folk-Carols of 1911.
Other versions survived, however, and though the tune and lyrics are not as close as others in evidence, that the motifs and sentiments are the same in undeniable. These suggest an influence from other carols collected by Sharp and others.
“The Holly Bears a Berry”
“The Sans Day Carol”
And for those who like a mashup:
