Carols at Christmas 2025

Christmas time

I was in Tesco, Gorey on Thursday 12^th December to listen to Loreto Primary school pupils singing Christmas carols. This heralded the start of the Christmas season for me.

They sang Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, the 12 days of Christmas and many more. They sang them all beautifully with cheery smiles on their faces while collecting for the Jack and Jill charity. We sang along with them. It was most enjoyable and a fitting start to the Yuletide season for pupils, teachers, parents and grandparents.

When it was over and the children returned to school I thought some more about carols. That simple performance brought back a lot of memories for me. I thought about my own schooldays, our carol services and what Christmas means to people in 2025.

I loved singing Silent Night in English, German and Irish at school. It has an enduring popularity and the sentiments expressed in it are as relevant today as they were when Joseph Mohr composed it way back in 1818.

I remember seeing clips of the Christmas Truce of 1914 when British and German soldiers emerged from their trenches on Christmas eve and Christmas Day. The German soldiers sang Stille Nacht [Silent Night], both sides exchanged gifts of rations and tobacco. They even played football. After that they buried their dead and then resumed fighting.

Next on my popularity list was Good King Wenceslaus, that 10^th century Bohemian King who personally went out to feed the hungry on the feast of Stephen when the snow lay round about bright and thick and even.

I come now to one of my all-time favourites, ‘Oh Holy Night’. This was originally a French carol ‘Centique de Noel’ composed in 1843 by poet and wine merchant Placide Cappeau for a local priest. It was set to music by Adolphe Adam and translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight, an American clergyman in 1855. I remember it being sung at midnight mass in my youth. It starts off so gently with Oh Holy night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear Saviours birth. It continues in this gentle vein until the beginning of the sixth line which starts with Fall on your knees. Oh, Hear the angel voices. There is a dramatic increase in scale here when choirs and audiences want to join in.

Oh, Holy Night is a carol full of hope and freedom. I think it is the carol for our times. I give you a few lines from the third verse of ‘Oh Holy Night’

Truly he taught us to love one another

His law is love and his Gospel is peace

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name, all oppression shall cease

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we

Christ is the lord, praise his name forever

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

I remember the Ronan Collins radio programme in December every year, He played different singers performing Oh Holy Night each day. There were some haunting performances especially when sung solo by a boy soprano. I loved them all.

Last week I was watching a video clip Of Suantrai from Arklow performing in Christ Church Gorey and yes, you’ve guessed it. They were singing “Oh Holy Night’ and what a beautiful performance it was.

We associate Christmas with Carols and good will to our fellow human beings, but I think we have strayed a long way off that narrow track in recent years.

Nowadays it is too common to see people begging on our streets, sleeping in doorways, in abandoned houses and buildings, on park benches and tents. It is now an accepted part of life that we have a divided society of haves and have nots, of refugees, asylum seekers, transients and people who use excessive non prescribed drugs.

At Christmas we can sing carols, but for the homeless there is no rest from hunger and cold. Peace on earth and mercy mild are mere meaningless words for these people.

We can sing that nice tune ‘Deck the hall with boughs of holly’. In war torn Ukraine, in Gaza and other trouble spots we could sing “Deck the streets with drones and bombings, kill the natives and eradicate the poor and people you don’t like. They are then shipped or flown away from the country they escaped to and landed somewhere where they can be shot or exploited. They are often forced to live in overcrowded camps with hunger prevailing and no privacy, no security and no quality of life.

I wonder what the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, The Congo Haiti, Pakistan, The Philippines or other areas of Famine, war and weather disasters, some of it brought along by climate change, think of   tidings of great joy this Christmas. Millions of people in these areas are facing acute hunger, famine and death.

We must always try to remember that these people are someone’s children or parents.

In our busy commercially driven world, it is nice to stop and ponder about the Christmas season and what it means to us personally and to those disadvantaged people in our own locality, in our country and worldwide. Then we can contribute something according to our means to some charity of our choice. They do such wonderful work on our behalf at Christmas and throughout the year.Help them in some small way to make this Christmas a more enjoyable one and give deprived people some morsel of hope for a better life of peace and freedom from war, hunger and deprivation in 2026.

That is my final blog for 2025 so all that remains for me to say at the end of another year of blogging is to thank all of you who follow me and I wish you all the very best of good health and happiness in 2026.

Tá súil agam go mbeidh Nollaig iontach agaibh go léir agus go mbeimíd go léir beo beathasach ag an am seo um Nollaig 2026.Slán tamall go bhfeicfidh mé sibh arís I mí Eanair.

Mick O Callaghan    December 2025