Advent carols vs Christmas carols
Advent and Christmas are two different seasons with two different repertoires, and a fair number of December carol services mix them without meaning to. In a corporate setting nobody will complain. In a church, an incumbent may well have views, and it is easier to know the distinction before you build the programme than after.
Two seasons, not one
Advent runs from the fourth Sunday before Christmas to Christmas Eve. Christmas begins on 25 December and runs twelve days to Epiphany. Almost every carol service held in the UK happens during Advent, which is the source of the confusion: people gather in Advent to sing Christmas carols.
Advent is a season of waiting and preparation. Its texts look forward — to a coming, to a promise not yet kept — and its music is correspondingly restrained, often modal and often in a minor key. Christmas texts announce that the thing has happened.
Liturgically the two are as distinct as Lent and Easter. In practice most December services blur them, and the pragmatic question is not whether to blur but how much.
The Advent repertoire
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
The Advent carol. The text is built from the O Antiphons, sung on the seven days before Christmas Eve, and the tune is a fifteenth-century French processional. Modal, unhurried, and entirely about waiting: “Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel” is future tense throughout.
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
Charles Wesley, and the title says the whole thing. Straightforwardly Advent and sung as a hymn more often than as a carol.
Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending
Advent in its other mode. This is about the second coming and the last judgement, not the nativity, and it is a good deal more alarming than most people expect from a December hymn. Sung to Helmsley it is one of the grandest things in the English repertoire.
On Jordan’s Bank and Hills of the North, Rejoice
Both belong to the preparation theme: John the Baptist, and the summons to make ready. Neither mentions a stable.
Adam Lay Ybounden
Fifteenth-century, and properly Advent, because it is about the fall that made the incarnation necessary. Boris Ord’s setting is the one most choirs sing.
The Christmas repertoire
Everything that describes the birth as having happened: O Come, All Ye Faithful, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, In the Bleak Midwinter, O Little Town of Bethlehem.
Once in Royal David’s City is Christmas, though its use as the opening of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve puts it right on the boundary.
Epiphany carols are a third category again and are routinely sung too early. We Three Kings belongs to 6 January, not to a service on 12 December, and the Wise Men do not arrive in the story until well after the shepherds have gone.
Does it matter?
For a corporate carol service, a hotel lobby or a residents’ evening: no. Nobody is keeping liturgical time at a drinks reception, and a programme of Advent restraint would disappoint a room that came to hear Ding Dong! Merrily on High.
For a service in a church, it depends entirely on the incumbent. Some are relaxed; some hold the line firmly and will not have Christmas carols before the fourth Sunday of Advent. Ask early, because it is a decision that shapes the whole programme and it is not yours to make.
The middle position, which most parishes take, is an Advent carol service in early December that keeps some Advent material and admits the best-known Christmas carols at the end. That is a defensible shape and it satisfies almost everybody.
Building a service that sits in Advent
An Advent carol service is a real form with its own shape: it moves from darkness towards light, both musically and often literally, with the church lit progressively as the service goes on. The readings run from the prophets through to the annunciation rather than to the nativity.
A workable programme opens with O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, keeps the middle in Advent territory with Adam Lay Ybounden, an O Antiphon setting and something from the Advent Prose, and finishes with one or two Christmas carols as the light comes up. Ending in Advent is possible and takes some nerve; a congregation that has waited an hour usually wants the arrival.
Our guide to carols by candlelight covers the lighting side, which matters more for an Advent service than for a Christmas one.
The O Antiphons
Seven ancient texts sung at Vespers on 17 to 23 December, each addressing Christ by a different title: Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Dayspring, King of Nations, Emmanuel. They are the source of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, whose verses are the antiphons in metrical translation.
The initials of the Latin titles, read backwards, spell ero cras — “tomorrow I shall be”. Whether that was designed or noticed later is disputed, and it is a better piece of lectern material than most.
Choirs sometimes sing one antiphon as a choir-only item in an Advent service, which is the most direct way to put genuine Advent material into a programme that is otherwise heading for Christmas.
Advent in a secular programme
Even where liturgy is irrelevant, the Advent repertoire is worth raiding for one practical reason: contrast. A programme of nine cheerful major-key Christmas carols flattens out. One modal Advent piece in the middle resets the room’s ear and makes the carol after it sound brighter than it would have on its own.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is the piece that does this best and needs no explanation to a secular audience, because most people know it without knowing what season it belongs to.
The same trick works with the darker traditional carols. The Coventry Carol is technically Christmas, being about the massacre of the innocents, but it does the same job of changing the temperature.
Where the boundary actually falls in practice
The fourth Sunday of Advent is the point most parishes relax. Before it, Advent material and restraint; after it, Christmas carols are fair game because Christmas Eve is days away. A service on 20 December is treated very differently from one on 5 December, even in the same building.
Schools are the exception at the other end. A school carol service is usually held in the second week of December because term ends, and no school has ever moved its date on liturgical grounds. Everyone accepts that, including most clergy.
Cathedral and collegiate foundations tend to hold the line hardest, because they sing the full Advent liturgy anyway and a carol service is one item in a season rather than the whole of it.
Telling the audience which is which
If your programme mixes the two, one sentence in the order of service does a lot of work: a note that the first half looks forward and the second half arrives. It turns what could read as muddle into a deliberate shape.
This also gives whoever is introducing the carols something worth saying. “This one is about waiting; the next one is about arriving” is a better line from the lectern than a summary of the plot.
For a corporate audience it is worth about thirty seconds and no more. The distinction is interesting and it is not what anybody came for.
Common mistakes
Singing We Three Kings in Advent. Epiphany material at a December service is the most frequent slip and the one a clergy reader is most likely to notice.
Treating O Come, O Come, Emmanuel as a Christmas carol. It is the single most Advent thing in the repertoire, and putting it after the nativity reading reverses the story.
Assuming the incumbent will not mind. Ask. It costs one email and it avoids a conversation in the vestry twenty minutes before the service.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an Advent carol and a Christmas carol?
Advent carols look forward to a coming that has not yet happened and tend to be modal and restrained. Christmas carols announce the birth as an event that has occurred. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is Advent; O Come, All Ye Faithful is Christmas.
Can you sing Christmas carols during Advent?
At a corporate event, hotel or residents' evening, yes, and nobody will mind. In a church it depends on the incumbent: some are relaxed, others will not have Christmas carols before the fourth Sunday of Advent. Ask before you build the programme.
When should We Three Kings be sung?
At Epiphany, 6 January, rather than at a December carol service. The Wise Men do not arrive in the narrative until well after the shepherds, and singing it in Advent is the slip a clergy reader is most likely to notice.
What are the O Antiphons?
Seven ancient texts sung at Vespers from 17 to 23 December, each addressing Christ by a different title. They are the source of the verses of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and the initials of the Latin titles read backwards spell ero cras, tomorrow I shall be.
We sing both Advent and Christmas services, and Luca will build a programme that fits whichever season your date actually falls in, including squaring it with the incumbent where that matters.
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