Nativity with Angel on the Roof

About this drawing

A nativity with rooftop angel recalls the very first Christmas music, at least according to Luke, who describes a heavenly host singing glory over the fields of Bethlehem. Early Christians turned those words into hymns in Latin, though most ordinary people couldn't understand them.

Carols in everyday languages gained ground in the Middle Ages. Saint Francis and his followers encouraged singing in local tongues, and people took the songs out of church and into the streets. In Puritan England, carols were frowned upon for a while, and a number of them only survived in villages. Victorian collectors later gathered them up and published them for a new audience.

America added its own favorites. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" was written by a Philadelphia pastor after a trip to the Holy Land, and "We Three Kings" came from a clergyman in Pennsylvania. One of the most loved of all began in Austria. In 1818, in the village of Oberndorf, priest Joseph Mohr asked organist Franz Xaver Gruber to set his poem to music. The church organ is said to have been out of order, so it debuted with a guitar. "Silent Night" is now sung in hundreds of languages, and in 1914 soldiers on the Western Front sang it during the famous Christmas truce.

• nativity
• angel
• carols
• ox
• donkey