Deck the Hall
The Stories of Our Favorite Christmas Carols
By Andrew Gant
Hodder Faith, 352 pages, $12.95
In the 1970s, amid enthusiasm over liturgical renewal, the slogan “We are an Easter people and ‘Alleluia’ is our song” gained some traction, particularly among Roman Catholics. A decade or so later, an Anglican pundit of my acquaintance quipped, “We are a Christmas people and ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ is our song.” The nativity of our Lord is celebrated, to be sure, wherever Christians are to be found. But it is not an extravagant claim that Anglicans “do” Christmas with notable flair. The festival and its attendant traditions are embedded among us at a virtually cellular level.
Andrew Gant of the music faculty at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, is professionally steeped in the Anglican musical inheritance. In this highly engaging curated volume (of the hundreds, at least, of items that might fit under the rubric “Christmas carol,” he deals directly with but 27 selections), Gant demonstrates that solid academic scholarship can bud forth with content that is eminently — indeed, joyfully and artfully — accessible to readers who might never pick up a doctoral dissertation on the same subject for some light reading. This is “popularization” in the highest and best sense of the term.
The tone is breezy, witty, playful, self-deprecating, and often humorous. Yet it is based on well-founded research, comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter, and practical experience. Gant weaves in an awareness of literary history, ecclesiastical history, the evolution of European music in both art and folk registers (and how the two swim together), and British social history, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which is when much of his subject matter comes together and gels.
There are certainly times when a reader might be grateful for some familiarity with the technical vocabulary of music theory. Gant wades into that territory without apology or explanatory comments. Yet such passages are relatively few, and those not fluent in their lexicon may often intuit the sense contextually. It’s all so approachably written that its demands feel unburdensome.
While the author is British to the core, he does not slight those of us on the western shores of the Atlantic. A handful of the carols he explicates are American, from the Appalachian “I Wonder as I Wander” to the commercially inspired “Jingle, Bells” (with a fulsome explanation of why the comma in the title is necessary). In most respects, Gant’s knowledge of the American music scene is both savvy and insightful.
Yet the distinction he posits between British and American preferences when various tunes are available seems slightly overdrawn. True, Americans will overwhelmingly prefer St. Louis over Forest Green for “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” just because they’re more familiar with it. But if one asks only among American Anglicans, the popularity of Forest Green will be much higher; it has been in Episcopal hymnals since 1940. The same applies to the alternative tunes for “Away in a Manger” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”
If I must put anything into the complaint box, it would be a wish for a proper chapter being devoted to “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Gant alludes to it several times in the context of writing about other carols, but this one seems to merit its own moment of fame, given the scope of its popularity and use.
If nothing else, Gant gives us a cogent rationale for the very existence of the genre “Christmas Carol”: “We are allowed to add to and embellish the founding narrative of our Christmas story. That, basically, is what Christmas carols are for.”
The Rt. Rev. Daniel Martins is retired Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in the Episcopal Church.