On the Twelfth Day of Christmas Carols

Today was both the 12th day of Christmas, and the last service of Christmastide. As with most Anglican churches, our music director had to schedule something from the Christmas section of the hymnal — after using many of the best known hymns on Dec. 24 (two services), Dec. 25 and Dec. 29 (1st Sunday after Christmas). As we prepare for 353 days without Christmas carols until the afternoon of December 24, three pieces of music this music stood out.

Sussex Carol

My daughter was thrilled that the offertory anthem was the David Willcocks arrangement of the Sussex Carol (”On Christmas night all Christians sing"). She is a huge King’s College fan, and after listening to the 100 Years of Nine Lessons and Carols for the past year, she has the melody, words and many of the descants memorized (particularly those of Willcocks and Philip Ledger). Although I have a number of recordings of this carol, the Willcocks is instantly recognizable on the third verse, the first of two verses with a descant: the boy sopranos are soaring over the top with choral colorings that accentuate the harmonies (but have little to do with the words).

Hymnary says this carol is found in 39 hymnals

• Lutheran (ELCA): Lutheran Worship (1978), Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2008)
• Presbyterian Church USA: Glory to God (2013)
• Southern Baptist Convention: the unofficial Celebrating Grace (2010), more progressive than the official Baptist Hymnal (2008)

As far as I can tell, these do not list descants in the main hymnal (but sometimes these have auxiliary descant books). However, the Willcocks arrangement with descant is in his Carols for Christmas.

Of the Father’s Love

Beyond the King’s favorite, my heart was gladdened that two of the three hymns were by John Mason Neale, the great Victorian hymn translator (and subject of my first music publication). The communion hymn was “Of the Father’s love begotten.” (H40: 20; H82: 82). This hymn was the subject of one of my first posts on this blog, back 11 years ago.

The text (at the end of the 4th century) by Prudentius. The Neale translation of “Of the Father sole begotten” first appeared in his 1851 Hymnal Noted. According to my 2018 paper in The Hymn, it was the 4th most popular hymn in 20th century US hymnals of the 105 texts and tunes in Hymnal Noted.

The Latin text (“Corde natus ex parentis”) was intended as a Christmastide evening hymn, and the tune (Divinum mysterium) was listed by Neale as a 13th century melody. The initial verse was later changed to “Of the Father’s love begotten” by H.W. Baker for  Hymns Ancient & Modern.

Hymnal Noted had 6 verses, but H40 only has 5 (H82 has only 4). The English Hymnal (#613) has 9 and the New English Hymnal (#33) has 7, but both use a later translation by R.F. Davis (“Of the father’s heart begotten”).

My favorite verse today — one I hadn’t noticed before — is V4 in H40:

Thee let old men, thee let young men,
Thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons virgins, little maidens,
With glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart is music bring,
Evermore and evermore!

It has significant modifications from Neale’s V5

Thee let age, and Thee let manhood,
Thee let choirs of infants sing;
Thee the matrons and the virgins,
And the children answering:
Let their modest song re-echo,
And their heart its praises bring,
Evermore and evermore.

Even so, there are two reasons I like it. First, it suggests the true joy of singing to the gift of the Christ child from God the Father. Second, it alludes to an antiphonal or responsive style of singing — 1000+ years before Neale and the Victorian choirs — which is a wonderful image of continuity for such a timeless hymn.

We closed out this unison hymn with a descant written by our music director that (AFAIK) is only sung at our church.

Good Christian Men Rejoice

We closed with the familiar “Good Christian men, rejoice!”. It was first published in 1853 by Neale and Thomas Helmore in Carols for Christmastide.  As Neale’s preface explains, the texts (except for Good King Wenceslas and Toll! Toll!) are free translations from the 16th century Swedish Lutheran Piae Cantiones (available online in a 1910 reprint). In Neale’s book, “Good Christian Men” is listed as “perhaps 14th century.” Our hymnal (H40)— like the original text — includes only three verses: at a normal tempo, the carol seems like it’s over almost as soon as it’s begun.

The 1853 book included Helmore’s adaptation of medieval tunes for each carol — in this case, the instantly recognizable In Dulce Jubilo. The harmonization in Hymnal 1940 is credited to Hymnal 1916 (#549), from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA (PECUSA).

Interestingly, the harmonization was done by Winfred Douglas. In 1916, the name might not have meant much, but twenty years later, he had edited and published Hymnal 1940. Unlike Hymnal 1916 and 1906's The English Hymnal, H40 contained a section with settings of mass and daily office chants for regular, congregation-sung chanting. The hymnal thus played a key role in 20th century American hymnody by introducing (or re-introducing) to the world many plainchant settings, adaptations and harmonizations.


Hymnary says this carol in 197 hymnals. This total includes the gender-neutered variant “Good Christian friends” that was introduced by the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship, and then copied by Hymnal 1982 and subsequent Methodist, Presbyterian and even Catholic hymnals — as well as Celebrating Grace.

Alas, the 1853 book held an influence far past its modern-day holdings: it’s not on the British, Oxford or Cambridge libraries, and WorldCat lists only one copy, in the Royal College of Music. No copies have been scanned by Archive.org or Google Books, but all the texts are included in the posthumous 1914 Collected Hymns, Sequences and Carols of John Mason Neale.