It being 12th night and all, we’re waiting for another bout of snow to hit London, getting ready for the feasting and partying to mark the end of the Christmas season (except […]

Well, it’s the 11th day of Christmas by my medieval calendar, so I can get in another two posts on this before Christmas officially ends. And, purely by coincidence, it’s more medieval […]

There isn’t just one, so I’m suggesting a bunch here. The first two come from the English Group Polyphony, with two albums called O magnum misterium (note the middle English spelling) and […]

We all know that many modern Christmas carols and songs derive from earlier versions. Musical history is full of these little evolutions. Some of our favorite carols turn out to be something […]

Big surprise, I’m going with Bach rather than Handel in this category. He seems like the obvious choice, and in this case you can’t argue with it–the opening alone is one of […]

The New Possibility, by John Fahey. Actually, this was Fahey’s first Christmas album, and there were a number of follow-up albums, but you can get all the first and most of the […]

Nowell, by Glenda Dove, Mitzie Collins, and Roxanne Ziegler. Who also did Ornaments, and Rejoice. Who? I have no idea, except that they seem to live in upstate New York, and their […]

Actually, for the country that invented the Christmas carol, you’d expect there to be a pretty wide range of choices, and you wouldn’t be disappointed, but still, you’d expect more. That’s probably […]

This is a bit of a mix in terms of category, because I have no idea what music gets called these days, or why. Folk used to have a fairly specific meaning […]

This is tricky. You want it to be calm, since you don’t want the kids to get up and start dancing–that alone lets out The Nutcracker. You don’t want too much singing, […]