Solsitce Carols?

There are! Why am I surprised? Here's a link: The Shortest Day Carols

And they're good!

Quick search...

http://wfdd.org/2005solstice.php has descriptions of three winter solstice radio broadcasts. One of them, " The Christmas Revels: A Celebration of the Winter Solstice", has a link to a PDF with playlists. Some of them are Christmas songs I recognize, and others might might be Christmas songs I don't recognize.

Also, there are apparently 5 compilations of winter solstice music that can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000007O8F/002-2365959-0081631?v=glance

Again, there seem to be a lot of Christmas tunes among the songs. I don't know how many are traditional songs that are specifically for the winter solstice. But I just figured I'd help get things started here...

Oh, looks like you already got things started here. And you found a much better link. Well, I feel useless!

No Smog! Don't feel useless, the more links, the merrier.

Here is a tradition set in my town. The Revels. Maybe I'll go this year. REVELS

They even have song books.

I think that much of the solstice stuff online will be too newage for my tastes. I want the old tunes and the old lyrics.

The OED gives the first definition of "carol" as"A ring- dance with song. Hence 2. A song; now usually one of a joyous strain". Carols were originally associated with holiday dances, and they had 'em for all seasons of the year. So there were winter ones definitely. Somewhere I have the Oxford Book of Carols, which covered the whole year, but I can't find it. Check your local library. The English traditional singers John Roberts and Tony Barrand form a group every Xmas called "Nowell Sing We Clear" who do a few concerts around New England celebrating all aspects of Yule, Xmas, St. Stephen's Day (the celebration of which involved killing a wren--go figure), and have a few CDs out. The Waterson Family and Maddy Prior (of Steeleye Span) each did albums of carols from around the year.

And the Christmas Revels started in Cambridge about 30 years ago and have since spread to many other cities. They do celebrations of the season with different themes--sometimes medieval, sometimes Victorian, or Caribbean, or Elizabethan, or gypsy, and usually manage to dig up something in the biplay that's solstice-y. Google "Christmas Revels" or try www.revels.org, www.calrevels.org, or revelsdc.org/

There was a song which i learned in choir these forty years ago and more, Wassail, which you might check out.

One Horse Open Sleigh was originally written by James Pierpont, and was written not for Christmas, but for Thanksgiving. The original version, of which Jingle Bells is a corruption, was not about Christmas, and was somewhat racy for the 1850s. If you can find an original performance version of it, it is well worth hearing.

"Wassail" is from the Saxon, and means something like "Your health" as I remember, like the toast, which is what it was, and Set's right, it's probably from pre-Christian tradition for the season, tho they got Christianized really early. When the days got dark, they'd go out wassailing, and it clustered around any holiday, not just Xmas. Lotsa wassailing around New Years too, since tradition said if you gave, you'd get. Be generous to others when the years changed and the generosity would come back to you all year. So it was pure charity on your part to go out and get sloshed, because you were insuring good luck for the hosts.

"over the River and Thru the Woods" and "Jingle Bells", as it happens, were both written in Medford, MA. If you go over the woods today, you're crossing Rte. 16 into Arlington.
Mystic Ave. in Medford and Somerville used to be the big road in town for all the society folks to take their polished sleighs and high-stepping horses and drive up and down (kind of a Yankee paseo) after snowfalls. Younger ones courted there and took their hotrod sleighs, the light ones, the two-seaters and had races. Those who went too fast or were poor drivers "got upsot" as the writer did in the third verse or whenever it was. Both general winter songs, as good for solstice as any.

There are also a whole bunch of different wassail songs from different areas of the British Isles.

from www.religioustolerance.org :



"Many symbols and practices associated with Christmas are of Pagan origin: holly, ivy, mistletoe, yule log, the giving of gifts, decorated evergreen tree, magical reindeer, etc. Polydor Virgil, an early British Christian, said "Dancing, masques, mummeries, stageplays, and other such Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalian and Bacchanalian festivals; which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them." In Massachusetts, Puritans unsuccessfully tried to ban Christmas entirely during the 17th century, because of its heathenism. The English Parliament abolished Christmas in 1647. Some contemporary Christian faith groups do not celebrate Christmas. Included among these was the Worldwide Church of God (before its recent conversion to Evangelical Christianity) and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

DRUIDISM: Druids and Druidesses formed the professional class in ancient Celtic society. They performed the functions of modern day priests, teachers, ambassadors, astronomers, genealogists, philosophers, musicians, theologians, scientists, poets and judges. Druids led all public rituals, which were normally held within fenced groves of sacred trees. The solstice is the time of the death of the old sun and the birth of the dark-half of the year. It was called "Alban Arthuan by the ancient Druids. It is the end of month of the Elder Tree and the start of the month of the Birch. The three days before Yule is a magical time. This is the time of the Serpent Days or transformation...The Elder and Birch stand at the entrance to Annwn or Celtic underworld where all life was formed. Like several other myths they guard the entrance to the underworld. This is the time the Sun God journey's thru the underworld to learn the secrets of death and life. And bring out those souls to be reincarnated." 14 A modern-day Druid, Amergin Aryson, has composed a Druidic ritual for the Winter Solstice. 15 "

Which reminds me, "The Holly and the Ivy" has been Christianized, but it was originally about the symbols of the Summer King and the Winter King, who was crowned around the time of the solstice, the changing of the seasons and the transition from dark to light, according to the folklorist (and singer) Tony Barrand, so I guess it us a somewhat mutated version of a solstice carol.

Bookmark.

Thanks all......

Littlek--

I'm very interested in any rituals taking place in your area between 12/14 and 12/22.

The links seem outdated....

Not rituals, exactly, but the Christmas Revels have multiple performances at Sanders Theatre at Harvard, in Cambridge. Google "Sanders Theatre" and whatever the Revels link was above for information.

username--

Thank you.

Username is right, I thought I posted the link. Maybe I didn't. The weekend after we meet at the Summer Shack, there are matinee and evening shows of the Revels. Great fun!

Username, are you in the Boston area?

Yep, Cambridge. Gonna be volunteer ushering for the Revels.

It struck me today that "Deck the Halls" is probablya solstice song--the holly we talked about above, they burn the yule log and the Scandinavians at least and I think the Celts too celebrated Yule, a lot of web sites say at the full moon closest to the winter solstice, plus it's got the reference to the old year passing, and a lot of people change years around the solstice time. and at least in the verses I can remember there isn't anything overtly Christian. So we may have an actual solstice carol masquerading as a Christmas song. But then we do know what a melange of traditions Christmas is.

There are some people in MD who send me a catalog it seems like every three days, called Daedalus Books. They deal in overstocks and cutouts and remainders, of books and CDs, and get some interesting stuff cheap (many CDs 6 or 7 bucks).They've got several CDs that sound promising: "Ancient Noels", "Cold Blow These Winter Winds","Noels Celtiques", "To Shorten the Winter""A Thistle and Shamrock Christmas Ceilidh", which are deifinitely Celtic music, if not solstice, and sounds like a lot of songs not in the usual store shopping soundtrack repertoire, ones that we might not have had the words to them drummed into our heads by the age of six.I've gone to them at www.Daedalusbooks.com but the catalog says they're also at salebooks.com could be some useful stuff there.

Ah, thought I had forgotten a link there--googled "What is the origin of Yule?" and got
http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/yule/ , which has Yule recipes and free Yule cards among other things (but the Yule cards link sends you to a greeting card site which had a lot of pop-ups which kept reappearing--I closed the browser and reopened a new one and they don't seem to have implanted anything, but you have to be careful these days, I guess, even on holiday sites).