- When it is kept
- All season
- Where it fits in the year
- All through the season
The word carol probably comes from an old French word, carole, for a circle dance with singers. Carols were popular dance songs long before they were sung only at Christmas.1 One of the oldest English carol collections is a manuscript of 1426 by a Shropshire chaplain, John Awdlay. It holds 25 carols, probably sung by wassailers going from house to house.1
In the 1800s two collectors printed old carols again. Davies Gilbert published Cornish carols in 1822, and William Sandys followed in 1833 with "Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern".2,3 The Victorians loved them.
The first service of Nine Lessons and Carols was held at Truro in Cornwall on Christmas Eve 1880, under Bishop Edward White Benson.4 King’s College, Cambridge held its first on Christmas Eve 1918 and has broadcast it every year since 1928, except 1930.5,4
Wassail comes from old English and Norse words that mean about "be in good health". Later it meant a toast, then the spiced drink itself. There are two kinds of wassailing. Groups go door to door singing for a drink or a gift, and in cider country people sing to apple trees, for example on January 17 at Whimple in Devon and at Carhampton in Somerset. "Here We Come A-wassailing" belongs to the first kind. Its earliest dated printing is in 1868, and it is probably older.6
Old belief
At an orchard wassail, people say the singing and the noise scare off evil spirits and help the apples grow. It is a traditional belief, with no record of when it began.6
In the Bible
Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 2:13-14
The carol began as a dance song, but singing for the birth of Jesus has a root in Luke. The shepherds hear this song from the angels.