Happy Holidays to all our readers! There’s a lot of great Christmas music out in the world, and we’ve shone a light on them in the past. Check out those blogs!
This year, we wanted to do something a little different for the holiday season. Have you ever wondered where the song “Jingle Bells” came from? Have you ever wondered what the most popular Christmas song is used in movies? We explore these questions and more in our Christmas edition of Did You Know?
The roots of Christmas caroling
Many people are familiar with the art of caroling. You gather a group together, go door to door, and sing with jolly good cheer, spreading the Christmas spirit. But did you know that caroling can be traced back to thousands of years ago? Caroling originated from communal songs, hymns, and wassailing (which is the act of going door to door offering well wishes during the colder months). Thousands of years ago in Europe, pagan songs were sung for every season, including winter solstice celebrations. People danced around stone circles which led to the act adopting the French word “carole” describing the act of singing and dancing in a circle.
Christmas themed songs can be traced back to 4th century Rome where they started out as rhymed stanza hymns that eventually turned to Christmas carols as we know it by the 12th century. During Puritan times in the 1600s, Christmas carols were banned as they were seen as an evil pagan tradition under the strict Christian ideals the group held. Despite the ban, people would sing the carols in secret until they became acceptable again during Victorian times. More carols were written, some which we still know today such as, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “We Three Kings of Orient.”
An oldie but goodie
There are a couple of Christmas carols from the 16th and 17th century that still hang around like “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” but the songs and lyrics were written at separate times. However, there is one carol that had the music and words written at the same time at the end of the 18th century. Did you know that it’s one still played often in the 21st century? That carol is “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The earliest printed version of the hymn was found in a book published by Francis Wade in 1751. The song became from more widespread in English-speaking countries after 1841 when the English Catholic priest Frederick Oakeley translated the hymn into English as "O Come All Ye Faithful" (Source).
The creation of Jingle Bells
“Jingle Bells”, the classic track that is one of the most popular Christmas songs to date was written and composed back in 1857 by James Lord Pierpont. But did you know it originally had a different title? The original title for the song was “The One-Horse Open Sleigh” but it seems “Jingle Bells” has more of a... ring to it (sorry, I had to). The lyrics were different too and had a significantly different melody for the chorus. Over time, it morphed into the classic everyone knows today. The song’s inspiration came from the Thanksgiving sleigh races. Despite it later becoming a Christmas song, it doesn’t have any connections to the holidays, at least in its origins.
And the streams won’t stop
Spotify is a very convenient music service for listening to whatever you want. No more lugging around CDs or relying solely on the radio. When it comes to the holidays, many people throw on a Christmas holiday playlist. One song that is inescapable during the holidays is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” It’s insanely catchy and popular. Did you know that it has nearly 2 billion streams on Spotify? That’s right, billion. This doesn’t even factor in all the radio play either. It’s that popular! Even the extremely popular version of “Last Christmas” by Wham! doesn't surpass it (although 1.5 billion streams are nothing to sneeze at). I wouldn’t be surprised if Carey’s modern Christmas classic surpasses the 2 billion mark this holiday season.
The core Christmas movie song
There are lots of Christmas songs that get featured in movies, sometimes even movies that aren’t holiday themed. There may be some that come to mind when we think of a Christmas song featured in a movie. But did you know there was a study done in 2015 to find the most used Christmas song in films? According to the 2015 Statista study done by the website FiveThirtyEight, the most popular Christmas song used in movies is “Jingle Bells.” Since this study is almost 10 years old, there’s a chance the top song has changed, but it’s interesting to note when looking at their chart that 9 of the top 10 are songs within the public domain. This means that they can be used without any copyright restrictions. So even if “Auld Lang Syne” or “Silent Night” surpasses it, it seems it will always be a public domain track that anyone can use, explaining its popularity. Unfortunately, we couldn’t track down to a more recent study, but my money’s on “Silent Night” being the current frontrunner.
International Christmas radio
Anyone who lives within the U.S. knows that it’s impossible to escape Christmas music. Even if you don’t listen to the radio, it’s on in nearly every store or showing up in commercials. That said, Christmas radio is a big deal in America. It’s in part how Mariah Carey’s holiday hit makes it back onto the charts every year. But did you know that the country that plays Christmas music on the radio the most is not the US? Yes, the top country to play the most Christmassy music is actually Germany according to this 2019 study. This is a fascinating statistic given the size of the country, but even broken down to how many stations per country play Christmas music, Germany still rises above.
The most popular Christmas song by state
Everyone has their own favorite Christmas song, but did you know there’s a chart that designates the most popular Christmas song in each state? Does your state’s favorite match your own? The chart was created by compiling a list of the most commonly streamed Christmas songs and comparing them on Google Trends and Semrush, an online marketing platform (Source).
The chart above comes from this (Source) from 2022.
We hope you enjoyed learning a little bit of holiday history! What fact was the most surprising or interesting to you? Let us know in the comments! We hope everyone reading this has a wonderful holiday season! Thank you for reading.
Special thanks to all the resources that helped me put together this blog...
Written by Kristen Petronio
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