Thread: Carolling Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
A comment in another thread about not getting many carolers, my first reaction was to agree and my second to admit we never did get many and rarely went caroling.

Is it a dwindling custom or something that has always been more a Christmas card thing than a real life event?

I think as kids we went caroling one evening for far less than an hour, one year or maybe two different years.

In recent years I try to round up some people to go caroling but most are too busy with kids and holidays and extra hours at work claiming their time. Others who express vague intererst perk up if it's changed from "let's go caroling" to "let's gather at my house and sing carols and drink hot buttered rum."

Is it just places I've lived that it is part of the seasonal cultural myth but never was much of a reality? Or has there usually been lots of caroling whee you live?

[ 22. November 2015, 21:18: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
When I lived in one village deep into Hardy country we went carolling round the village every year, not that I lived there long. There was a route that ended up at my parents for mince pies and mulled wine.

I heard suggestions to go carolling somewhere else on the edges of Hardy country, but I am not sure we ever managed it.

Here there's usually carol singing in the supermarket one night/one weekend from the churches together fundraising and on Christmas Eve the Rotary run a Carols on the Green event which is very popular, with music and choirs leading carols and there are carols sung at the Christmas Market - this year it's 4th December.

[ 22. November 2015, 18:43: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
The Churches Together network I was part of gets a group (of adults) together to sing carols outside Lidl one afternoon every Christmastime. And the little choir from my old church used to sing carols at the local maternity hospital.

I think this is more culturally acceptable now than knocking on doors and singing. For a start, you wouldn't get many kids wanting to do something as uncool as that, and adults knocking at your door to sing religious music would just look like doorstep evangelism. Good Anglicans and Methodists would be mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses, which would never do!

But perhaps it still happens in small, homogeneous communities
 

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Posted by cattyish (# 7829) on :
 
The local choral and operatic society do it for their own funds. (Opera is criminally expensive to put on and every production makes a frightening loss. I love it though.)

I'd love to start a tradition of singing in the pub in the Advent season. Perhaps if there were a few good men interested.

Cattyish, wondering how one introduces men to the joys of singing in public.
 

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Posted by M. (# 3291) on :
 
For a few years, our choir has sung carols in the pub every year - new landlord this year, though, so I don't know if it will happen. I hope so!

The music director also started a singing group for men, folk, Beatles etc, who sing a few times a year, in the pub, old people's home, various church events, raising money for charity. A few have joined the choir but it's a fun thing to do of itself and is only an occasional commitment.

M.
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
For some years I would go wassailing round the Herfordshire pubs with members of a local folk club. Proceeds to charity. One pub paid us not to sing!
 

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Posted by cattyish (# 7829) on :
 
Hee! I love the payment not to sing. Perhaps I can work that angle

Cattyish, friendly pub nearby.
 

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Posted by Spike (# 36) on :
 
Too early for carols. It's still only November.
 

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Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by jacobsen:
For some years I would go wassailing round the Herfordshire pubs with members of a local folk club. Proceeds to charity. One pub paid us not to sing!

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A few years ago a group of us from my church tried carol singing in the market just across the road from the church. We were asked to go away in case we caused offence to some customers!
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I'm not sure if this counts as carolling since it isn't singing, but when I was young in the Netherlands we would play Christmas carols with a brass group in the wee morning hours of the 25ᵗʰ (cold!).
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Deeply traditional in my neck of the woods.
Two evenings of carols sung at set points (around a Christmas tree on a green and then at the focal point of another small hamlet), plus we have carols in the two pubs.

Although popular the static carol singing isn't popular with older residents so this year we'll once again be singing down the lanes - stopped a few years ago on safety grounds but we've had talks with the local police and we're going to do it again. Being a very rural parish we have no street lighting or pavements apart from a small stretch of the main road through the village so we do have to be very careful to do head counts and ensure everyone has reflective arm-bands, etc.

As a separate thing the choir sings in 2 garden centres, splitting the proceeds of that 40-60 between the music fund and the charity which is, of course, The Children's Society.
 

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Posted by Cathscats (# 17827) on :
 
One of my villages sings around the tree in the square, when it's lights are switched on: this year that will be December 7th. Another of my villages goes out on Christmas Eve around the farms and houses. They are mainly church people and get into trouble with the minister (me) if they are late for the Watchnight service!
 

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Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
We get people via the local 'Churches Together' to cover Saturdays ouside the supermarket.
 

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Posted by Kitten (# 1179) on :
 
When i lived in Norfolk, we always had carol singers, some in the market place, some going door to door, both in town and village, we even had the carol singers come round on a tractor pulled trailer when I lived in one remote, widely spread out village.

When I moved to Devon I was disappointed that the town had no carol singers going round, instead we get the Rotary Club with a float bearing Father Christmas, fairy lights and several incredibly tasteless cut outs of Disney characters belting out carols, and other Christmas music through speakers from a CD player. I understand that the organisers believe it to be a delightful spectacle to amuse the 'kiddies' while raising funds. The young people that I used to work with dubbed it the 'Tacky Wagon'
 

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Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
When we lived in Belfast, D. used to take the Cathedral choristers carolling several times in the run-up to Christmas, and the funds raised went to the Dean's Christmas Sit-out, which is a well-established part of the festive season in Belfast.

Usually the first gig of the season was on the first Tuesday in December at Malone Golf Club, a very up-market joint whose president at the time had been a Cathedral chorister in his youth; other venues included boat clubs, Masonic lodges and the like. Afterwards the boys would get burgers and pop and the parents and hangers-on would get mulled wine and mince-pies, so everyone was happy.

For a couple of years, the whole choir (not just the boys) was invited to sing carols at the Central Railway Station, and a donation to the Sit-out was made by NI Railways - that was quite fun, although a bit chilly; I also remember seeing a couple of school choirs singing carols in the local shopping centre.

We did the odd bit of (more-or-less) impromptu outdoor carol-singing in Orkney, usually starting outside the Cathedral, and making our way to the pub via the doorsteps of people we knew, and breaking into A Policeman's Lot is not a Happy One as we passed the cop-shop ...
 

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Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :
 
Darkened used to organise a group to sing in 4part harmony in some of the more affluent parts of Stourbridge when he was in the 6th form. Our 6th form used to go singing round some of the local pubs to raise money for charity. We would usually end up with far fewer people than we started with!
Our church normally arranges an evening's carol singing visiting many of the housebound. I used to enjoy going, now I'm one of those sung to.
 

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Posted by Polly Plummer (# 13354) on :
 
My grandmother as a girl went into hospital with appendicitis just before Christmas. When she came round after the operation, the nurses were singing carols round the ward, and she thought she'd died and gone to heaven and it was the angels singing
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
Coming back to what I've said earlier, I really like the tradition in some Dutch villages, that a small group of brass players play Christmas carols early Christmas morning. We start around 6. Not very loud, we just play a couple of carols on street corners. People tell us that it is nice to wake up to this, when it is still dark and cold, on the day that Jesus was born. On some occasion it was so cold that the slide of the trombone froze stuck mid-song. We see a lot of people in pyjamas behind windows. Sometimes someone quickly opens a window to give us a "Merry Christmas" to which we say "Merry Christmas" back and then we go on. I like this a lot.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
When we did carol sing around the village it was the week before Christmas. Not Christmas Eve, because there was a big Christmas service in church, but some time that week.
 

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Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
Around here it is common for carolling groups to go to nursing homes to sing for the residents.

Moo
 

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Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :
 
We sing carols in our local pub a few days before Christmas, and this year we are planning to team up with the Salvation Army band to blitz.....er...I mean edify the customers at our brand-new ASDA store.....

We also have an in-house Carol Service at our one-and-only sheltered accommodation block, which complements the monthly Eucharist held therein.

I.
 

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Posted by basso (# 4228) on :
 
Some of my happiest memories are of a community chorus (where I met my wife) that used to sing lots of carols around town. One year a group of us wandered into one of the most desperate dive bars on the main drag. It was magical - from the looks on the denizens' faces you'd have thought we were the original angelic choir.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I think one of the great losses is the lack of a carolling vocabulary. Most carollers seem to only have sheets with no more than 10 of the most hackneyed and overused carols in existence, and understandably many are rather tired of hearing them year after year.

Of course, it is better to hear almost anything sung by trained singer in a choir, but it seems that the original point of carols was as an unaccompanied form which many could join in with, so the tunes are often quite simple.

I so rarely hear anyone sing carols like the Coventry Carol or the Sans Day Carol that I wouldn't mind hearing anyone attempt them. There must be hundreds of others that nobody ever sings.

Also, of course, Easter carols. I can't remember the last time I heard one of those.
 

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Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Most carollers seem to only have sheets with no more than 10 of the most hackneyed and overused carols in existence...

There must be hundreds of others that nobody ever sings.

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I'm not sure about the "hundreds of others." One year a friend sent me a Christmas gift of a book of Christmas songs, bought in an "antiques" store, copyright back multi-decades. I was thrilled to see not just the familiars but also Christmas songs I'd never heard.

Well. No forgotten gems in that old book! All the unfamiliar ones deserved forgetting.

But also what I'm hearing is caroling in the sense of an informal bunch wandering through a neighborhood singing carols doesn't happen. It's almost always pre-existing groups ("the choir") at established places (nursing homes).
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I just found two random carols from this list with a video on youtube that I didn't know before and they're both quite interesting.

But then YMMV, I'm quite into English folk songs.

[ 24. November 2015, 13:52: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Mr Cheesy

Not every year, but you'll certainly find the Coventry Carol (as from the pageant of the Tailors and Shearmen) at our place, and we also sing the Sans Day Carol. This year we'll be singing Kenneth Leighton's setting of the Coventry Carol.

When planning our main carol service I try not to repeat a carol within at least 5 years, more usually 10, so that we cover a fair number, plus I try to include a recently composed carol/new setting every year.

IME the trick is to make sure the congregational carols are well-known favourites; anything outside the norm can be introduced but, IME, only one item a year. I also try to avoid too much repetition over the Christmas period, so we may have the old office hymn for Christmas Eve, Come, thou redeemer of the earth at the carol service (which is held before Christmas) but not Hark! the herald ages sing.

For the school carol service I'm in the hands of their 'music specialist' so its a fairly dire mix of things like Good King Wenceslas and The Cowboy carol - I left it to the Vicar to explain why Frosty the Snowman wasn't a natural fit for a carol service in church
 

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Posted by kingsfold (# 1726) on :
 
I'm still convinced there's a niche for a single carol "Twinkle twinkle little donkey in the manger" to get it all out of the way in one go.
(can you tell I'm scarred by years of crib services?)
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Surely the best carol yet-to-be-composed is Little Rudolph, light the shepherds to see Mary kissing Good King Wenceslas in a one-horse open sleigh? Can't John Rutter come up with something catchy for that?
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
This sounds like a thread. Might try it out in the Circus.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Mr Cheesy

Not every year, but you'll certainly find the Coventry Carol (as from the pageant of the Tailors and Shearmen) at our place, and we also sing the Sans Day Carol. This year we'll be singing Kenneth Leighton's setting of the Coventry Carol.

When planning our main carol service I try not to repeat a carol within at least 5 years, more usually 10, so that we cover a fair number, plus I try to include a recently composed carol/new setting every year.

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