Christmas isn’t Christmas without a Secret Santa. Here’s a bonus on Christmas Day for your advent calendar. Sorry it doesn’t contain a piece of chocolate, or a G&T, or whatever you might prefer, but here’s an extra carol for you. It’s still in copyright so I’m being a bit coy and avoiding the tags and flags which might alert the Legal Eagles (or Legal Beagles, Dex.)

Carol of The Bells

Hark how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say
Throw cares away

Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold

Ding-dong, ding-dong
That is the song
With joyful ring
All caroling (Oh, oh, ah)

One seems to hear
Words of good cheer
From everywhere
Filling the air

Oh, how they pound
Raising their sound
O’er hill and dale
Telling their tale

Gaily they ring
While people sing songs of good cheer
Christmas is here

Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas
Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas
On on they send

On without end
Their joyful tone
To every home

Ah, ah, ah

Ding-dong, ding-dong
Ding-dong, ding-dong

Hark how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say
Throw cares away
(We will throw cares away)

Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold

Oh how they pound
Raising their sound
O’er hill and dale
Telling their tale

Gaily they ring
While people sing songs of good cheer
Christmas is here

Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas
Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas

On on they send
On without end
Their joyful tone
To every home

Ah, ah, ah

Do you know it?

If you don’t recognise the words, you might recognize the tune because it’s a real ear-worm. For the last few years it’s been the December background theme tune for Sky Sports as the voice-over previews their forthcoming attractions. The tune is a sequence of four notes repeated very quickly, with frequent shifts in key to prevent any tedium setting in. It keeps driving forward at a rapid pace, and the quickly sung lyrics – lines of just four syllables to match the four notes – usually sung in a high register by women or young boy choristers can be difficult to follow which is why you might not recognise the words.

There are sample performances here with both female and boy chorister voices. Play whichever you prefer (or bits of both) and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Carol of the Bells was written by Mykola Leontovych (1877-1921), an Orthodox priest, Ukrainian composer, choral conductor and music teacher who specialised in a capella music. The tune is in the public domain (maybe why Sky Sports keep using it) but the words in these video clips were added in 1935 by Peter Wilhousky (1902-1978), an American composer of Ukrainian heritage, which explains why the lyrics are still in copyright.

The tune was written in 1904 and first performed in Ukraine in 1916. After the Russian Revolution (1917) church music was discouraged by the Soviets so the Ukrainian National Chorus went on tour; they performed in Europe from 1919 to promote their music, and started a tour of the USA at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1922. Originally it was intended as a song to celebrate the New Year and even today it still features in Ukrainian celebrations on 13 January – the old Julian calendar equivalent of New Year’s Day.

Mykola Leontovych was from a family in which the three previous generations had been priests within the Eastern Orthodox Church (a result of the division within the Christian Church between Rome and Constantinople in 1054), and he too went to become a priest. He was a fastidious musician and composer, and would work and then rework pieces for years before he made them public – as the history of this piece indicates.

Within the Ukrainian tradition, like Vaughan Williams and others in England, Mykola Leontovych explored the elements of old folk tunes and sought to include them within his compositions. The Carol Of The Bells is a case in point, with an original version of the piece (called Shchedryk) telling of a swallow seeking shelter from winter in a farmer’s barn and describing for the farmer the bounties that could be expected from the forthcoming summer. Leontovych was by no means a reactionary; as a young man he had been active in the 1905 Russian Revolution but by 1917 was a married man with a daughter, and a religious and musical vocation. However, as a successful Ukrainian composer he had too high a profile for the the comfort of the Soviet elite and he was assassinated by the Cheka (secret police) on Lenin’s orders in 1921. (Why am I not surprised by that?)

Mykola Leontovych’s murder makes the posthumous success of his piece even more poignant. Its popularity today, within popular music rather than classical music, is largely due to Peter Wilhousky who arranged music for the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the USA and added the English language lyrics to the Ukrainian folk song in 1935. Since then there have been almost 200 recordings of the piece, including versions by Al Di Meola and LeAnn Rimes. I think its attraction for Sky is its repetitive patterns resembling contemporary dance music beats as well as sounding Christmassy.

When I first heard the music a couple of years ago I was irritated by the infectious way the rhythm worked its way into my subconscious – that ear-worm effect. Then, when I identified the tune and the words, it struck me as being the ultimate postmodern Christmas carol: the one carol with no reference at all to the nativity, or the angels, or the wise men, or the angels; the one carol that just celebrates The Celebration. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about these days – the celebration of The Celebration? And when I explored the history of the tune and the song, it became the celebration of survival. Mykola Leontovych may have died, but his tune is more successful that ever and with it his name continues. And we’ve survived too: we’ve survived (so far) Covid-19. Sergei and Yulia Skripal survived. Viktor Yushchenko survived. The list goes on: sure, some will succumb, some will fall, but we survive.

I hope you all survive Christmas.

Merry Christmas.