Most people agree that there is something special about Christmas
music. Perhaps it's the feel-good spirit, the abundant joy inherent
in its melodic patterns or its ability to bring a smile to even the
crankiest of curmudgeons. Christmas songs and carols are amongst
the most recognised pieces of music, not surprising really given
that they are on radio stations and in every public place you can
think of for nearly a quarter of the year. A true sense of
Christmas music's popularity can be illustrated by the fact that
Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas' was, until recently, the best
selling record of all time.
Although hymns about Christmas are known to have existed in Roman
Times it wasn't until the 13th century, around the time of St
Francis of Assisi, that songs celebrating the birth of Jesus became
popular. It would be a few centuries later before many of the songs
we still cherish today like 'The First Noel' and 'Hark The Herald
Angels Sing' would arrive (both appeared in print for the first
time in 1833) with the formalised practise of singing Christmas
carols in churches starting in England in 1880.
The purpose of our website is to comprehensively catalogue every
song that was ever written about the season of goodwill. So while
we'll focus in on secular standards such as Mariah Carey's 'All I
Want For Christmas Is You' and well known carols like 'Away In A
Manger' we'll also focus on those compositions that have been lost
to the mists of Christmastime. Not only that but you will also find
details on the numerous covers that have been recorded for
individual songs; like 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' which seems to be
adopted by a different artist each new December.
Christmas-songs.net is not only text and information though as
nearly every page on our website includes at least one music video.
Our jukebox feature takes this one step further by aggregating all
of the videos across the site onto one page. We will be introducing
more and more features as we near our favourite season of the year
so make sure you drop back regularly.
Given that every year brings a plethora of new festive records
this website will be forever in a state of work in progress. We
understand that we'll miss important recordings along the way so
we'd love you to get involved by letting us know about your
undiscovered gems.