Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols

“O Little Town of Bethlehem” has shaped how millions of English speakers imagine the Palestinian town where Jesus was born: a small place, still and peaceful, resting under the stars. The wars and struggles of recent decades invite us to question whether that image is true. And yet, “Bethlehem is still a very little town,” says Stephanie Saldaña, a writer and mother raising her family in this religiously and culturally diverse place. “It is a small place where everybody knows each other.”

Still more striking is how closely the need that gave rise to the carol echoes the present moment. In 1865, after the Civil War devastated the United States, Philadelphia rector Phillips Brooks was broken by grief—Lincoln’s assassination and the loss of his younger brother to cholera while serving in the Union Army. Seeking solace, Brooks traveled to Bethlehem. What he found there—peace, stillness, God present in a small community—he later put into words and set to music as a carol for children who had lost fathers to war.

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Now, more than 150 years later, that same carol reaches those in the Holy Land today, reeling from pandemic and war—and far beyond—to offer us what it has always offered: stillness, God's presence, enduring hope.

In this fifth season finale, host Maggi Van Dorn speaks with:

The music featured in this episode was generously gifted to “Hark!” Our thanks to Frank Tuson, Richard Gilewitz, Salt of the Sound, Smalltown Poets, St. Paul’s Boys Choir School, Cambridge, Mass., The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, U.K., The Roches, and Tony Alonso, courtesy of GIA Publications, Inc. Our theme music was produced by Frank Tuson.

Want short, inspiring Bible reflections every day during Advent and Christmas? This year, our Scripture Reflections are free for Hark! listeners—sign up at AmericaMagazine.org/hark.  

Love a good holiday brain-teaser? Our weekly Christmas carol trivia is exclusively for America subscribers. ⁠Take the fourth and final quiz of the season here!⁠ Or visit, AmericaMagazine.org/hark.

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Did you know that when a ewe rejects her newborn lamb, the shepherd has only hours to convince her to nurse it—or the lamb will die? This is the work of shepherds—staying awake through the night when lambs are being born, watching closely, ready to step in and save them. It gives new meaning to the good shepherd. In this episode, host Maggi Van Dorn travels to a farm in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, to understand shepherding, and discovers why God might have chosen shepherds to be the first to hear the good news.

But shepherding is not all Maggi learned about for this episode. She has a firsthand learning experience too. After 30 years, she once again took up the fiddle, working with her teacher to discover why “The First Noel”—with its simple, stepwise melody—is the perfect carol for those just starting out or returning to music.

She speaks with:

The music featured in this episode was generously gifted to “Hark!” Our thanks to Colin Britt, Matt Isaac, The Grant High School Royal Blues directed by John Eisemann, Quincas Moreira, Salt of the Sound, The Maine All-Student Theater Project, Tony Alonso and GIA Publications, and Maggi’s fiddle teacher Nic Coker. Our theme music was produced by Frank Tuson.

Want short, inspiring Bible reflections every day during Advent and Christmas? This year, our Scripture Reflections are free for Hark! listeners—sign up at AmericaMagazine.org/hark.  

Love a good holiday brain-teaser? Our weekly Christmas carol trivia is exclusively for America subscribers. ⁠Take the quiz here!⁠ Or visit, AmericaMagazine.org/hark.  

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We often imagine angels as gentle and serene. But in Scripture they arrive in blinding light and overwhelming sound—so much so that their first words are almost always “Do not be afraid.” These are the messengers who burst into the night sky to meet a group of poor, worn-out shepherds—outsiders who become the first to hear the news of Christ’s birth.

“Angels We Have Heard on High” draws us into that holy night. Encounters with the divine rarely stay within the bounds of one language, and this carol embodies that truth. Born in French, welcomed into English, yet always held by one steady constant: the Latin refrain “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” According to French legend, shepherds sang that proclamation from field to field on Christmas Eve, their voices reaching person to person, place to place, echoing the angels announcing Christ’s birth to all.

Maggi speaks with:

Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, who explains why angels in Scripture inspire awe and fear, how the idea of guardian angels emerged later in Christian history and why God chose marginalized shepherds as the first recipients of the good news.

Christopher Walker, an internationally renowned Los Angeles-based composer, conductor, choir director and liturgist, returns to his hometown in Bristol, England, where he directed music at Clifton Cathedral for years. From a friend’s recording studio, he deconstructs the carol’s musical architecture, showing how a single word in the Latin refrain unfurls across sixteen soaring notes to evoke the motion, echo and lift of angels in flight.

Our thanks in this episode go to Armonico Consort; Vox Turturis and Andrew Gant of Signum Records; the Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Ricardo da Silva, S.J.; Derek Fiechter; the Gothard Sisters; Richard Gilewitz; Malukah; The Grant High School Royal Blues and John Eisemann; The Roches; Christopher Walker and OCP; Simon Wester; John Weston; and Anna, Fae, Frank and Genevieve Tuson. Our theme music was produced by Frank Tuson.

Want short, inspiring Bible reflections every day during Advent and Christmas? This year, our Scripture Reflections are free for Hark! listeners—sign up at AmericaMagazine.org/hark.  

Love a good holiday brain-teaser? Our weekly Christmas carol trivia is exclusively for America subscribers. ⁠Take the second quiz here!⁠ Or visit, AmericaMagazine.org/hark.  

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Most Christmas carols celebrate the birth of Jesus. But not “The Coventry Carol,” the premiere episode of “Hark!” season five. This song centers on a biblical horror: the “massacre of the innocents,” King Herod’s order to kill all male babies two years old and under in Bethlehem. It’s a lullaby sung by mothers to children who may not survive the night.

In this episode, host Maggi Van Dorn travels to Coventry, England, to trace how this centuries-old lament survived the Reformation, a devastating library fire and the 1940 bombing of Coventry Cathedral during the Second World War— and how it has served the city’s witness to grief and reconciliation. She speaks with:

In a BBC broadcast from Coventry Cathedral’s ruins after Germany’s bombing Blitz, against England, Provost Richard Howard urged the nation to “build a kinder, more Christ-childlike world,” even with years of war still ahead. Hope had to begin in the rubble—a reminder that this lullaby carries us through Advent into Christmas not by turning from the world’s pain, but by singing through it together.

Want short, inspiring Bible reflections every day during Advent and Christmas? This year, our Scripture Reflections are free for Hark! listeners—sign up at AmericaMagazine.org/hark. 

Love a good holiday brain-teaser? Our weekly Christmas carol trivia is exclusively for America subscribers. Take the first quiz here! Or visit, https://www.americamagazine.org/hark

The music featured in this episode was generously gifted to “Hark!” Our thanks to James Bilodeau, ⁠The King’s Singers⁠ and ⁠Signum Records⁠, ⁠Brad Prevedoros⁠, ⁠Matthew Pierce⁠, ⁠Avaendil⁠, ⁠Brian Thiessen⁠, ⁠Cynthia Boener⁠, ⁠Salt of the Sound⁠, ⁠the Coventry Cathedral Girls’ Choir⁠ and the ⁠Choir of King’s College, Cambridge⁠. Our theme music was produced by ⁠Frank Tuson⁠.

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On the final episode of Hark! this season, prepare yourselves for a wee bit of scandal because we’re looking at a tune that began as a bawdy love song and has long been associated with an evil monarch, but which, over the course of three centuries, finds its redemption as a Christmas carol. This is the story behind, “What Child Is This?”

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“What Child Is This” may have been derived from a Christmas poem by William Chatteron Dix in the mid 19th century, but its musical roots stretch as far back as the 16th century, when its famous tune, “Greensleeves,” was circulated in Europe’s royal courts. 

In an attempt to track the tune’s composer, and separate fact from fiction, Maggi Van Dorn brings on Milton Mermikides, the 37th Gresham Professor of Music at Gresham College, London.

Maggi is then joined by Richard Jeffrey-Gray, head of the music service for the Diocese of Clifton, Bristol, United Kingdom, who traces how the romantic ballad  “Greensleeves” became the Christmas carol “What Child Is This,” along with what makes this, according to Richard, “one of the most, perfect tunes to to play and to sing.” 

Susan Reynolds, a theologian at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and mom of three girls, unpacks the rhetorical structure of the song’s lyrics and its profound theological implications for our world today.

The music featured on this episode was generously gifted to Hark! by Clifton Cathedral Choir, Bristol, U.K.; Nicholas Steinbach and Grey Duck Music; Holland Albright; Cynthia Boener; Michael Logozar and Brian Thiessen. With special thanks to Signum Records for providing renditions of the carol "What Child Is This" by the following artists signed to their label: King’s Singers, Armonico Consort, Matthew Barley and The London Cello Sound, featuring the 40 cellos of the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Philharmonia Orchestras.

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If you’re in search of an ancient, theologically rich carol this season, look no further than “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Long before it became a Christmas carol in the 19th century, this hymn was first penned as a poem in the 4th century by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius. As Brian Flanagan, theologian and church historian, explains, this was a time of significant turmoil in church history, with Christian doctrine being defined and refined through heated debates and councils. Prudentius’ poetry appears to have been a creative way of conveying some of the core teachings that emerged from the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to the faithful.

The elegant verse was later paired with a Eucharistic hymn, thought to be from either the 10th or 13th century, and translated by the renowned Victorian composer John Mason Neale. This poem-hymn has thus endured over 1,500 years of history, proclaiming the mystery of the incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas. Host Maggi Van Dorn also welcomes back Colin Britt to help us appreciate the musical subtleties of this great work, and best-selling writer and novelist Nicole Baart shares why she chose to sing this carol on her wedding day.

We owe a great debt of thanks to Richard Jeffrey Gray and the members of the Clifton Cathedral Choir, accompanied by Stephen Bryant and directed by Dr. David Bednall; the Schola Cantorum of St. Peter’s in the Loop, directed by J. Michael Thompson; the Mount Holyoke Glee Club, conducted by Colin Britt; and Lori Pappajohn and Ricardo da Silva, S.J., for providing the music featured in this episode.

The show wraps with “Of the Father’s Heart Begotten,” arranged by Sir David Willcocks and performed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, under the direction of Daniel Hyde. This recording is included on their album In the Bleak Midwinter, available through King’s Recordings.

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This season of Hark! is sponsored by Saints for Sinners, offering divine saint medals imported from Italy and meticulously hand-painted in New Orleans.

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On this episode of “Hark!”, we follow the beat of a modern carol that has gained worldwide fame, yet was composed almost while napping. It is a tale about a figure the Bible never mentions, but whose bold gift leads us straight to the heart of Christmas. This is the story of “The Little Drummer Boy.”

First, Lisa Graham, the director of the choral program and a senior lecturer in music at Wellesley College, narrates how Wellesley alumna Katherine Kennicott Davis composed her “Carol of the Drum” in 1941 and how the college bid $11,000 in a battle to win the rights to the original manuscript. 

Research historian Christian McWhirter, then unpacks the much-romanticized symbol of the drummer boy on the battlefield during the American Civil War. Finally, host Maggi Van Dorn, takes a music lesson with the incomparable liturgical composer, Christopher Walker, also the author of 12 books of stories and songs for children.

We are most grateful  to our real-life drummer boy, Garrin Knapp, for interpreting and demoing the percussion elements of the carol, and for sharing what the song means to him. The soul-stirring solo of “The Little Drummer Boy" heard on this episode was specially recorded for “Hark!” by Frank Tuson, our very own sound engineer and composer of our theme score. The show wraps with a performance by The King’s Singers from their Christmas album, courtesy of Signum Records.

Midway through production on this episode, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Western North Carolina, where Maggi has called home for four years. This episode is dedicated to the ongoing relief efforts in the affected areas. Please consider making a donation to these reputable organizations:

BeLoved Asheville: a non-profit organization that has been boots on the ground since long before the hurricane and which will serve those on the margins long after. 

ReString Appalachia:  a movement dedicated to getting quality instruments back in the hands of those who lost them in the hurricane.

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This season of Hark! is sponsored by Saints for Sinners, offering divine saint medals imported from Italy and meticulously hand-painted in New Orleans.

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To kick off the fourth season of “Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols” we’re embarking on an adventure to learn about an American-born carol that features some classic nativity characters—figures that, though very familiar to us, we know little about. It’s a Christmas song that begins on a plodding, somber note and erupts into a thrilling epiphany. We’re exploring “We Three Kings.”

To help us understand who the magi were—at least from the perspective of Matthew’s Gospel— host Maggi Van Dorn invites Eric Vanden Eykel, author of The Magi: Who They Are, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Ferrum College.

The magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh have long been viewed as symbolic of Jesus’ kingship, divinity and humanity, but how were these two herbs used in antiquity? Maggi learns about their earliest uses from Emiliana Patrick, a fourth year doctoral student in Classical Chinese Medicine at Daoist Traditions College in Asheville, North Carolina.

To trace the star the magi followed, Maggi turns to the director of the Vatican’s observatory, Guy Consolmagno, S.J., a Jesuit brother.  Finally, to better appreciate the musical genius of the carol’s composition, she speaks with ContraForce, a folk metal band known for their eclectic range of musical styles at contra dances, who specially created an instrumental rendition of “We Three Kings,”specially for “Hark!,” that is woven throughout the episode.

The music featured in this episode is courtesy of ContraForce, Michael Logozar, Cynthia Boener, Dante Bucci, the Lee siblings of the Seasons band, Jeff Black and Lotos Nile Music. Special thanks to Jim Bilodeau, our sound engineer, and Jonathan Reid Gealt for lending their vocal talent.

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This season of Hark! is sponsored by Saints for Sinners, offering divine saint medals imported from Italy and meticulously hand-painted in New Orleans.

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Our final episode of Hark! this season departs from the usual nativity of Christ in a manger, surrounded by shepherds and angels on high. Instead, our carol centers on the singular icon of a rose. “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” is a German Christmas song, first published in a Lutheran hymnbook in 1599. Although its believed to be much older, originating in a Catholic monastery with an uncertain date and writer. 

And not only do we not know who wrote the text for our carol. The person behind the basic melody is also a mystery. The music is often credited to Michael Praetorius, a German composer, organist and music theorist from the 16th and 17th Centuries. But, Praetorius didn't compose the main melody; he only added the harmonies that have made this “the rose of all carols” among choristers and music maestros.

Adding further to the mystery of this carol, the symbol of the rose is ambiguous. Depending on the translation and verse, the rose could represent Jesus or his mother Mary, who in Catholic mysticism is adorned with roses.

Our heartfelt thanks extends to every musician, choir and soloist who gifted their music so generously to Hark! this season. On this episode we are especially grateful to:

The Choir of King’s College Cambridge, The Ignatian Schola, Cynthia Boener, Katie Green and Karen Hefford, Barbara Rowe for sharing the music of her husband, the late Bryan Rowe, Gary Cope and the Encomium Ensemble, the music department of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, Stephen Lynerd, Winter Harp and The Notre Dame Folk Choir, under the direction of JJ Wright, who walked us through the music of “Lo How A Rose” on this episode.

Special thanks to the Benedictine monks of Saint John's Abbey Schola in Collegeville, Minnesota. In particular to Father Nick Kleespie who coordinated the performance of Father Anthony Ruff's arrangement of “Lo, How a Rose,” featured in this episode. To learn more about the monks of Saint John’s Abbey, please visit saintjohnsabbey.org.

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We’re looking at a song that is indisputably a Christmas carol but with a reach that extends to every season – “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” It belongs to a collection of historic Negro Spirituals, which likely started on the slave plantations in the American South and were later picked up in the Civil Rights Movement by activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and later, The Freedom Singers. 

“Go Tell It on the Mountain” has been performed by a multitude of heavenly singers and we were lucky enough to speak to one such star- Vanessa Williams- about why she chose to feature the carol on her 1996 Christmas album, Star Bright. Maggi Van Dorn, Hark’s host, also garnishes rich cultural and theological insight from Catholic liturgical heavyweight, Eric Styles, along with expert music and history lessons from the wildly talented Emorja Roberson, Assistant Professor of Music and African-American Studies at the Oxford College of Emory University.

The music featured in this episode is thanks to The OK Factor, Caleb Noeldner, Kendra Logozar, Kim and Reggie Harris, Vanessa Williams, and Universal Music Enterprises. Special thanks to Pauline Books and Media for the recording of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” by Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A. We're grateful to Emorja Roberson for providing commentary and his singing voice throughout, and to Frank Tuson for his audio wizardry as the engineer on this episode. Frank also composed the Hark! theme music and successfully convinced members of his family to record “Down to the River,” heard on this episode.

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Or you can play a little reindeer game with us and win a subscription to America! 

At the end of this episode, we’ve left a clue about next week’s carol. Guess the carol in an Instagram post, tag three friends, and follow @americamedia, and you will be entered to win a one-year digital subscription to America.

No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents only 18 and older. Prize value is $49.99 each. Promotion period November 26 to December 22, 2023. Twenty winners will be randomly selected and notified by D.M. by January 10, 2023. Instagram does not endorse this giveaway.

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