Carol of the Bells

Christmas Carols Explained, #22

Oh boy.

Ohhhhh boy.

My homework on this one took me down some mind-bending rabbit holes. This’ll be a longer and more elaborate backstory. Right off the bat, let me share the following video, which is a far more thorough history of this song than I could ever provide, and I couldn’t restate the information without completely commandeering this guy’s research. It’s 15 minutes long so skip it if you want, but I recommend checking it out. The short version is that this was a Ukrainian New Year’s song meant for the springtime, based on a pagan reckoning that focused on the seasons instead of the Gregorian calendar. The original music was composed in 1914 by Mykola Leontovych.

In the comments of his video I also found this gem from someone who knows more about this genre of music than I do. For example, I’ve been enjoying Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums for 25+ years, but didn’t know anything about the band members or other bands they’d been part of.

So based on these accounts—and I’ve got no real indication that their research is faulty—Carol of the Bells isn’t about Christmas, it’s just used that way. Like another song on this list (I already forget which) it was originally for the New Year.

The Christmas association came about in 1936 when American composer Peter Wilhousky (who had Ukrainian ancestry) wrote English lyrics to the song, specifically about the holiday. In my own lifetime the Christmas connection was fortified by the 1990 movie Home Alone, which used the up-tempo tune for the action climax of the film, when Kevin prepares to defend the McAllister home from Harry and Marv. I still remember attending a bell choir performance for church in Green Valley when I was but a wee lad, and when the choir performed this song, someone in the congregation behind me said “Oh hey, it’s the Home Alone song.”

Now, Mannheim Steamroller had already rendered their own version in the 80s, and I love that one too. In fact, it’s hard to find a bad version of this song. Back in the 90s when Christmas break rolled around, my dad would take my siblings and I to work with him on different days, then take us Christmas shopping for our family. Since he was a salesman he spent a lot of time in his car driving from customer to customer, and my parents were big Rush Limbaugh fans, and Rush Limbaugh was a big Mannheim Steamroller fan, so ten year-old Graham got to listen to Rush Limbaugh hyping up Mannheim albums on the AM radio—and he was perhaps the most hyped about the major overtone of “Carol of the Bells.”

(Although “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” had to be a close second.)

Anyway, in sum, it should come as no surprise that one of the most war-ridden regions of eastern Europe would produce aggressive Christmas music that has its roots deep in the soil of the battlefield. As to the pedants and the hipsters who love to point out the Christmas holiday’s “pagan roots,” well, let me just remind you that it all belongs to Christ anyway, so have fun. :)