I love Christmas music, so I’m always looking for new ways to mix it up and enjoy it. This year, I became interested in finding the oldest Christmas songs in the world. Here they are, from earliest to latest. This particular list encompasses songs from the Late Antiquity (250 to 600) and Medieval (600 to 1400) eras. It is the first in what will be a series of posts and playlists curating Christmas Music Through the Ages.
To make it on the list, the songs had to have been paired with their modern melodies before the Renaissance (or pre-1400) because that list will be next in the series. I came across a number of songs with lyrics that belonged here, but with melodies that were not added until later (sometimes much later). But I was most interested in the songs as they are known today.
For the list, I selected two versions of each song–one that I thought sounded more “ancient”, and one that sounded more modern. Songs originally written in Latin or another language have an “older-sounding” version in that language and the more modern one in English. (DISCLAIMER: I have no background in music history whatsoever and when I say it “sounded more ancient” to me, I literally mean that I pretended I was watching a movie set in that era and tried to imagine whether I could picture it being played by some characters in the background–in other words, these versions are really chosen based on nothing but imagination and potentially faulty instinct. Maybe someone with musical history knowledge will be able to find more historically-accurate versions!)
- “Jesus Refulsit Omnium” (“Jesus, Light of All the Nations”): This one was written in Latin by St. Hilary of Poitiers between 310 and 367 C.E., likely shortly after the first Christmas was celebrated in 336 C.E. The original melody has been lost to time, but various modern ones exist based on ancient chants.
- “Corde Natus ex Parentis”/”Of the Father’s Love Begotten”: This one was written in Latin by the Roman poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius between 348 and 413 C.E. Its melody is a medieval plainchant (or Gregorian chant) that appeared in 10th-century manuscripts and was printed in 1582. John Mason Neale and Henry W. Baker translated it into English in the mid-19th century.
- “Laetabundus” (“Joy Abounds”): A Gregorian chant written likely written in the 10th or 11th century.
- “Ánarchos Theós Katabébēken”, a.k.a. “Byzantina Kalanta” (“God Who is Beyond All Authority Descended”, a.k.a. “Byzantine Carol”): This is considered the oldest Greek Christmas carol with surviving lyrics and melody. It is thought to be from the 11th century.
- “Orientis Partibus”/”The Friendly Beasts”: Originating in 12th-century France, this was translated into English in the 1920s by Robert Davis. Its melody is usually attributed to Bishop Pierre de Corbeil and thought to have been composed around 1222.
- “Null’ome Per Ren Non-Deve”: Circa 1257-1283, the court musicians of Alfonso X “El Sabio” composed a collection of 420 songs in Galician-Portuguese. This was number 50. (There really wasn’t a version of this I could find that sounded particularly “modern”, so I just gave you two older-sounding ones here.)
- “Angelus ad Virginem”/”The Angel to the Vergyn Said”, a.k.a.”Gabriel Fram Evene King”: This one is estimated to be from the late 13th century. Its origin is unknown, but thought to be possibly connected to Franciscan circles.
- “Puer Natus in Bethlehem”/”A Child is Born in Bethlehem”: The author of this one is unknown, but it is thought to come from the 13th century, with a 14th-century melody eventually set to music by Samuel Scheidt in 1620.
- “Entre le Bœuf et l’Âne Gris” (“Between the Ox and the Grey Donkey”): Written in France between the 13th and 16th centuries, the exact origins of this one are lost to time. I was unable to find a version in English.
- “In Dulci Jubilo”/”Good Christian Men, Rejoice!”: This is believed to have been written around 1328 by Henrich Seuse (or Henry Suso), who claimed angels sang it to him. The tune is older, possibly a Gregorian chant, but the popular arrangement is by Johann Sebastian Bach. John Mason Neale translated the lyrics to English in 1853 from the macaronic (meaning jumbled or mixed language, like what we might refer to colloquially as “Spanglish”) Latin/German original.
- “Birjina Gaztettobat Zegoen”/”Gabriel’s Message”: This traditional Basque folk carol from the 14th or 15th century was translated into English by the Anglican priest and hymnist Sabine Baring-Gould in 1922. (This was one of the songs that got me started with this list, because after hearing it at the Christmas Eve service at my in-laws’ church and wondering how there could be Christmas songs, and particularly hymns, I had never heard before, I realized there must be many more out there. Another was “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day”, but that is for a later list.)
If you enjoyed this list, you might like my lists of Yule or Solstice carols!
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