14/12/2025
Hereâs our Sunday Girl, Revd Ann Gibbs. This week her Reflection is called Carols of Christmas. Photo: I spy a Sunday Girl at Singing in the Ring, do you? Photo from our Winter 2024 mag, by Emily Fleur.
âI will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.â (Charles Dickens)
We have now reached the third Sunday of Advent; cards are arriving daily, the village decorations are out in force and Christmas trees are readily available â and already festooned in many a house or business. During Advent I live one day to the next with my diary to hand and lists to be ticked. Carols and Carol services are in full swing and I spent a few minutes today trying to work out how many carols I will have sung between Advent Sunday and Christmas Day â I gave up counting when I reached 150 and still had a good number of services and events to go!
Christmas carols occupy a rare place in our human experience â they are songs we return to year after year, unchanged yet continually renewed by the voices that carry them, generation to generation. People love carols not only because they are beautiful melodies, but because they awaken memories, a sense of community, and hope.
The moment someone hears âSilent night, holy nightâ, a lifetime of memories rises to the surface: candlelit services, family gatherings, snowy evenings, or simply the comfort of being small and safe. Carols are like time capsules, linking generations in a shared emotional language. Unlike many kinds of music, carols are songs designed to be sung together. When a crowd voices âJoy to the world! The Lord is comeâ, strangers become a chorus. There is something disarming and democratising about communal singing â no training, no perfection required â only willingness and a desire to be part of the music, to be involved.
Even the simplest lines carry the promise of renewal. âThe weary world rejoicesâ expresses a yearning that resonates: the longing for peace, rest, and a better tomorrow. In moments of collective uncertainty, these songs help people imagine the light returning.
Carols often blend innocence with awe. âA thrill of hopeâ or âO come, all ye faithfulâ speak to the human experience of encountering something greater than oneself â whether spiritual, emotional, or simply the beauty of the season, the intangible something that words cannot explain. The sound of bells, choral harmonies, and gentle lullabies instantly forms a world which is somehow more comfortable than the one we normally inhabit. Even secular favorites do this: when voices rise in âJingle bells, jingle all the wayâ, the atmosphere can change â becoming a little warmer, a little more playful, a little more alive.
Amid the bustle of these weeks of Advent, carols have the ability to slow us down. Melodies like âIt came upon the midnight clearâ carry a contemplative softness that allows listeners to breathe, to remember, and to feel and to wonder once more at the story of that first Christmas.
People with a strong faith and people with none love carols because they are emotional bridges â to the past, to one another, and to hope itself. In a season defined by both joy and longing, carols offer a language that transcends circumstance and context. They remind us, in familiar words and simple melodies, that light still breaks into the world, and that we are most human when we sing together.
âChristmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart ⊠filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever. Even though you grew up and found you could never quite bring back the magic feeling of this night, the melody would stay in your heart always-a song for all the years.â (Bess Streeter Aldrich)
