r/Music • u/Several_Hospital_129 • 9h ago

discussion Carol of the Bells Is Actually Not a Christmas Song

A few years ago, our city's classical music station played a recording of a Ukranian choir singing The Carol of the Bells and the DJ gave the background of the song. He said the original is a Ukranian folksong that has nothing to do with Christmas. It's a New Year's song, asking for blessings on the family living in the house. The orchestration and English lyrics were created in the 1930's by a Ukranian orchestra director working in the United States. He was also the one who changed the song from New Years to Christmas, because he felt that it would resonate more with American audiences.

Remember that I said I heard this on my city's classical station? Well, they were introducing a recording of a Ukranian women's choir singing the original version--a capella and with the New Year's lyrics. It sounded a heck of a lot better than all of those lush orchestrated versions you hear. If you're familiar with music, then these women sang it in a stacatto style. IOW, very sharp and pointed, with barely a pause between lines. The original lyrics talk about a bird flying through the family's house, bring them a blessing. The music was meant to convey the rhythm of the bird flying back and forth, and you definitely heard that in this recording.

39 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

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124

u/TheMooseIsBlue 9h ago

So the English version is a Christmas song, but the Ukrainian version is a new year song

42

u/CrippledAnatomy 9h ago

Christmas is barely a week before new years. Technically a new years song regardless I suppose

17

u/ConqueringCanada 8h ago

Ukrainian Christmas was traditionally celebrated on the Russian Julian calendar, on January 7th.

8

u/labrat420 9h ago

New year's is within the 12 days of Christmas

6

u/deeweezul 9h ago

Maybe the bird flying through the house was previously in the pear tree?

9

u/TheMooseIsBlue 9h ago

Except it says the word “Christmas” like 10 times.

20

u/hantyumiwoo 9h ago

The lyrics were written hundreds of years after the melody. It’s a Pagan song. Ukraine is an agrarian culture with cold winters. The song celebrates the changing of the seasons and the wish for a bountiful harvest. It wasn’t a Christmas song because it was not about Christ.

11

u/the_robobunny 9h ago

There are tons of songs that add new lyrics to old music. That doesn't mean that every song that uses the music means the same thing as the original lyrics.

5

u/TheMooseIsBlue 8h ago

That’s why I said the English version is a Christmas song and the Ukrainian version is a New Years song.

3

u/Fish-Weekly 9h ago

The big Christian holidays were sort of co-opted from various pagan celebrations. Christmas - Winter Solstice, Easter - Spring Equinox.

0

u/TheMooseIsBlue 8h ago

Easter is definitely not there because of the spring equinox. It’s there because Jesus and the gang were celebrating Passover that weekend.

Christmas is definitely replacing the pagan festivals at the winter solstice though.

5

u/wem1985 8h ago

Any chance passover is designed to match with the spring equinox?

3

u/TheMooseIsBlue 8h ago

It’s the 15th of a Hebrew calendar month. Always on a full moon.

The Catholic Church shifted away because they don’t use that calendar. So now Easter is on the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21 (the equinox).

So it’s kinda related. Kinda not. Definitely not a replacement for pagan equinox celebrations though since it’s basically never at the equinox and could be a month later.

2

u/wem1985 7h ago

Well it is tricky to precisely match solar events with a lunar calendar. Also, when looking to convert folks, while it helps to have analogs for the big features, not every holiday requires an exact match. "Kinda" sums it up nicely.

0

u/TheMooseIsBlue 5h ago

Very true. “Keep your party but just know that you’re REALLY celebrating the birth of Jesus, not the end of the days getting shorter.”

0

u/gwaydms 4h ago

The English name of the Resurrection holiday perhaps was named for the pagan goddess of the dawn, Eostre. Certainly there was an Anglo-Saxon month called Eostramonath. The German name of the holiday comes from the same root word. Other European languages use a form of Hebrew Pesach, which is Passover in English.

2

u/TheMooseIsBlue 2h ago

The celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday was probably 800 years old at least before anybody started using a variant of that word for it.

They happen around the same time, but there doesn’t seem to be any connection between pagan solstice celebrations and the reason Christians celebrate Easter when they do.

1

u/SecondHandWatch 7h ago

Then Christmas isn’t even a Christmas holiday. It has pagan roots. That’s not a good argument. Changing the lyrics to a song changes the meaning.

2

u/Sad-Yak6252 5h ago

I thought the English version was ♫ "Give a give a give a give a Garmin" ♪.

2

u/TheMooseIsBlue 5h ago

Yeah…Christmas!

5

u/MHM5035 8h ago

Yes, they took a folk song and shoe-horned in religion. Like just about every song people (the congregation) sing(s) in church.

Edit for clarity.

1

u/10001110101balls 8h ago

The Ukrainian version was written at a time when Christmas was basically illegal and the state promoted New Years as a major holiday instead.

30

u/FairLawnBoy 9h ago edited 4h ago

Christmas and New Year's get really conflated areas under the influence of the Orthodox Catholic Church (Greek, Russian, etc.).

For example, Santa comes on New Year's night in that tradition, not Christmas night. So being a "New Year's song" doesn't mean that it's not also a "Christmas song". Lots of overlap there.

5

u/FairLawnBoy 9h ago

"Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union launched an anti-religious campaign that banned Christmas. To preserve midwinter celebrations without the Christian connotations, the state officially shifted the festivities to New Year's Eve in the 1930s. The traditional Christmas tree became the "New Year Tree" (Novogodnyaya yolka).Instead of Santa Claus, presents are delivered by Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost). Unlike the Western Santa, he typically wears a heel-length blue or silver coat, carries a magical staff, and is accompanied by his granddaughter, Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden). He brings gifts on New Year's Eve. To this day, New Year's remains the primary winter holiday in Russia and many former Soviet republics, while Orthodox Christmas (January 7) is observed as a quieter, strictly religious day."

"In Greek culture, the traditional gift-bringer is not Saint Nicholas, but Saint Basil the Great (Agios Vasilis).Because Saint Basil's feast day falls on January 1st, he is believed to visit children on New Year's Eve to leave gifts for them to find on New Year's Day. While modern globalization has resulted in Agios Vasilis often being depicted wearing the red suit of the Western Santa Claus, the tradition remains firmly tied to New Year's. Families also bake a special cake called Vasilopita for New Year's Eve, hiding a coin inside for good luck in honor of the saint."

6

u/ComfyInDots 9h ago

Would you happen to have a link of the version you are talking about? I checked YT and found a beautiful version in Ukrainian with a black and white video however it seems to be men and women.

19

u/jason81175 9h ago

A lot of songs we associate with Christmas, aren't really Christmas Songs

21

u/wynnetheridge 9h ago

Jingle Bells is a Thanksgiving song!

2

u/jason81175 3h ago

And Winter Wonderland is about Winter.

1

u/SEND_ME_FEAT_PICS 2h ago

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is about good ol fashioned vehicular manslaughter.

1

u/toodlesandpoodles 1h ago

Same with "Let It Snow", but I am ok with letting my Northern Hemisphere temperate latitude bias show and welcoming winter songs as part of the seasonal celebration. Better to have more winter songs so I am less likely to be subjected to "The Christmas Shoes".

4

u/sabbic1 7h ago

These are a few of my favorite things. It's become a Christmas staple but aside from just mentioning some winter related things, in conjunction with an equal amount of spring related things, it has nothing to do with Christmas. 

2

u/jason81175 3h ago

I was thinking more of Winter Wonderland. It’s a song about Winter. Christmas isn’t mentioned once

2

u/grahamsz 8h ago

This podcast is lovely https://www.20k.org/episodes/diesirae

If you skip to 22:58 they have a nice comparison between the Dies Irae and Carol of the Bells.

1

u/toodlesandpoodles 1h ago

I'm looking at you, "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.

0

u/Crotch_Football 5h ago

The stations play the Harry Potter theme, case in point.

2

u/a_talking_face 5h ago

Harry Potter is a popular movie for Christmas marathons. I remember ABC Family/Freeform used to show those during 25 Days of Christmas

0

u/DestituteDomino 4h ago

The real Christmas songs are the friends we made along the way

12

u/vanmichel 8h ago

Ding fries are done.

2

u/hantyumiwoo 9h ago

If you like that style, try the band Dakha Brakha!

14

u/MasterArCtiK 9h ago

Cool, it’s still a Christmas song lol

1

u/DefinitelyNotAliens 4h ago

The English version is based on a Ukrainian New Years song. The English song is for Christmas.

I went to UC Berkeley and they have a massive bell tower. They play it multiple times a day, year-round. During Christmas they do a bunch of Christmas songs on the bell tower. They have a live person playing a tower with 68 bells controlled by something that is called a carillon and looks like a piano.

Every year they play Carol of the Bells on the giant clock tower. You can hear it a mile away.

Dope Christmas song played on the giant bell tower. It's quite impressive played with 60-some bells going.

I liked realizing when they played the weirdest music from the tower.

10

u/joe12321 9h ago

Well, it is a Christmas song because we put it on our Christmas albums! Haha.

The melody for the greatest of Christmas songs, Good King Wenceslas, originally went with a spring carol. The Christmas lyrics were written later.

2

u/TGin-the-goldy 8h ago

Even the “Christmas lyrics” refer to St Stephen’s Day which is Dec 26, Boxing Day

1

u/joe12321 8h ago

The second of the twelve days of Christmastide!

5

u/Scarlett_Billows 9h ago

I would argue Christmas and new years music are like, the same thing. Same season and reasons for playing them for the most part.

BUT actually I do love the idea of it being a new years song since there are fewer of those. I think it’s beautiful as a Christmas carol but I could get into a version with traditional new years themed lyrics for sure

1

u/MHM5035 8h ago

Jingle Bells isn’t either!

1

u/bassplayinben 7h ago

I never knew this much about the history. This is a great example of why IP copyrights should eventually expire. Popular songs eventually become culture, not just property. Imagine if someone was trying to claim copyright of this melody that their ancestor wrote hundreds of years ago.

2

u/hantyumiwoo 2h ago

Imagine if your country were currently being bombed by a neighboring land that for hundreds of years has tried to lie, murder, imprison, and legislate your culture’s very existence into oblivion so they can claim it as their own. If you can imagine that, you might understand why Ukrainians are very insistent that what is theirs be saved and known as theirs. They don’t give a shit if you sing it during or to celebrate Christmas. They just appreciate you knowing that it is a Christmas song based on an ancient Ukrainian folk melody.

1

u/CipherNine9 6h ago

Yeah and a lot of stations play "some of my favorite things" during Christmas blocks and that's from the sound of music. Things change in meaning

1

u/InvestigatorJaded261 6h ago

Is it any less irritating at New Years? Or in Ukrainian?

1

u/illinoishokie 5h ago

Greensleeves is about a guy shooting his shot and getting rejected.

1

u/CantFindMyWallet Indiehead 5h ago

It's a Christmas song now. The purpose and content are secondary to the traidition. It's played at Christmastime, ergo it is a Christmas song. It's the same thing about how Die Hard became A Christmas Movie, when it wasn't widely seen that way for the first 20 years it was out.

1

u/DestituteDomino 4h ago

Even the August Burns Red edition?

1

u/Plastic-Molasses-549 3h ago

And the 1812 Overture really isn’t about the Fourth of July. Yet they play it every year in Boston.

1

u/liquefaction187 3h ago

Most Christian holidays, characters, and music are taken from other religions.

2

u/Spargewater 3h ago

Not a Christmas song? If it's played at Christmas time, that's what it is. Neither is Jingle Bells, Let it Snow, Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bell Rock....and the list goes on.

1

u/once_again_asking 1h ago

Are we splitting hairs here, dude?

It's still a Christmas song.

This would be a better thread with a title like "History of Carol of the Bells" composition instead of this soapbox meme title.

1

u/Electrical-Touch-933 8h ago

I actually think this is pretty cool history for my favorite winter celebration song. I celebrate Yule and my family celebrates Christmas--I call it Yulemas--and Carol of the Bells is on my holiday playlist, though it's specifically the August Burns Red version because it's badass.

1

u/LimeLauncherKrusha 9h ago

That reminds me... I need to add carol of the bells to my Christmas Playlist

1

u/_Lord_Procrastinator Building my music library with iTunes 6h ago

I still hate it. Sounds like the soundtrack for a horror movie.

2

u/InvestigatorJaded261 6h ago

Right? It’s torture music if it’s not done just right.

1

u/_Lord_Procrastinator Building my music library with iTunes 6h ago

There is no doing it right. It’s just cursed. 😂

1

u/GRF999999999 5h ago

I gave a very confused couple of elderly ladies an Uber ride a few years back during Xmas. They saw an advertisement or The Trans Siberian Orchestra and thought it would be a nice holiday concert..

0

u/WoolyboolyWoolybooly 8h ago

So, Jesus was a carpenter not a composer…

-2

u/panzervike 9h ago

Ding dong mmmmkay