It was just a song that in some versions involved Jesus on

The surprising origins of famous Christmas carols

canada goose outlet ottawa The Christmas carol service was invented in Truro in 1880 by a chap called Edward WhiteBenson. The story goes that on Christmas Eve everybody in Truro would get disgustingly drunk, and that the Bishop of Truro (Benson) was so disgusted that he decided to lure everybody out of the pub and into the church with his new service. canada goose outlet ottawa

canada goose outlet in vancouver The problem with this story is that there no evidence that that what motivated Benson. And canadian goose jacket we do know a lot about him. He later became Archbishop of Canterbury and his cheap canada goose uk whole family had something of a mania for writing. His wife had 39 lesbian lovers. How do we know that? Because she kept a diary, and numbered them. One of his canada goose black friday sale sons was the eminent gay novelist EF Benson. Another was the eminent gay poet Arthur Benson. canada goose outlet in vancouver

Arthur wrote the words to Land of Hope and Glory. He also buy canada goose jacket cheap wrote a diary of four million buy canada goose jacket words, which is often reckoned to be canada goose coats on sale the longest ever. His daughter Margaret was an eminent lesbian Egyptologist. His daughter Nellie actually stole one of her own mother girlfriends and died of TB.

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canada goose outlet michigan Anyway, in 1880 this family, or rather this hive of oversexed logomania, was in the brandnew diocese of canada goose uk black friday Truro. Carols were folk songs; originally they were folk dances (that what meant: dance in a ring Why would you see three ships come sailing by? The answer is that nobody knows canada goose outlet michigan

canada goose outlet miami This is why so many of them are really rather odd. Why would you see three ships come sailing by? The answer is that nobody knows. It was just a song that in some versions involved Jesus on Christmas day in the morning, and in other versions involved three pretty girls on New Year Day. It doesn make any sense anyway as a Christmas hymn because Bethlehem is landlocked. The same thing goes for The Holly and the Ivy. There is a religious version, but there are also versions that are just about holly and ivy, and the fascinating question of which one is better. canada goose outlet miami

Hark! Who goes there?

canada goose outlet in new york Then in the 18th and 19th Centuries folklorists started to collect these folk songs and smarten them up, and people started to write new ones. But even these new ones were a bit incoherent and the versions changed all the time. For example, the cofounder of Methodism Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful carol that began: canada goose outlet in new york

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canada goose outlet price And that how the carol went for 20 years, until another preacher called George Whitefield published a new version that went: canada goose outlet price

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canada goose coats uk Wesley was not in the slightest bit amused by this (probably because the Bible is quite clear that the herald angels who appear to the shepherds saytheir news, they don sing it). He wrote that he didn wantto be held either for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men But he is. Look in any hymnbook and Hark the Herald Angels Sing will be clearly listed: words by Wesley, tune by Mendelssohn. canadagoosediscount canada goose coats uk

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canada goose outlet store toronto Mendelssohn would be even more perplexed and vexed by the whole thing. He died without ever even hearing of the hymn. canada goose All he did was to write a song about Gutenberg. It uk canada goose was precisely 400 years since the invention of the canada goose clearance printing Canada Goose sale press and Mendelssohn knocked out a song about it. However, he realised that once the anniversary had passed, it would probably need some new words as songs about type aren that popular. He wrote Canada Goose online in a letterthat he didn mind what new words were written just so long as they weren religious. Then he died, and a few years later somebody noticed that the tune would work very well with Hark cheap Canada Goose the Herald Angels Sing and that was that. Good King Wenceslas was a real chap, except he wasn a king and he wasn called Wenceslas, but he may have been good. His name was Vaclav and he was Duke of Bohemia in the 10th Century. Poor little Vaclav had a difficult childhood. His father died when he was a child canada goose clearance sale and he was brought up partly by his mother and partly by his paternal grandmother. These two ladies did not get along at all uk canada goose outlet well, especially as his mother was pagan and his grandma was Christian. Eventually, his mother solved the problem by the timehonoured method of dealing with difficult mothers in law: she had her assassinated strangled with a veil, to be precise. Then Vaclav Canada Goose Parka came of age and employed the timehonoured method of dealing with overbearing mothers: he exiled her. canada goose outlet store toronto

After that Vaclav started his career of dogoodery. He would potter about his dukedom, especially at night, giving Canada Goose Coats On Sale stuff to the poor. An early biography says: every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that canada goose coats he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all canada goose store the wretched.

canada goose outlet black friday sale Given that he was the duke, I would have thought that he could just free the prisoners. And I don think much of prisons that anybody can break into in the middle of the night. Mind you, I also don see what he had against shoes; and I shall never know now that he dead. canada goose outlet black friday sale

If I had a brother named Boleslaus the Cruel, I would watch out

You see, Vaclav still had one family member left, his brother Boleslaus the Cruel. Now, if I had a brother with a name like that, I would watch out. It a dead giveaway. I would employ bodyguards. I would watch my back like a hawk. But Vaclav didn and Boleslaus and a few of his friends assassinated him in 935. It is a sad truth, but a certain one, that Good King Wenceslas did not look out.

But where (I hear you cry) was Wenceslas faithful page in all this, the one who followed him around in the snow? Well, his name was Podevin and he doesn seem to have been there at the assassination; instead he showed his Christian charity by taking out one of the assassins in a revenge killing before being chased, Canada Goose Jackets cornered in a forest, and killed.

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canada goose outlet england Boleslaus canada goose uk shop was still wiping the blood off his lance when he was told that his wife had given birth to a son. So he called him Strachkvas, which means Feast Then he got on with being cruel and the Bohemians started to get all nostalgic for the days of Vaclav. Soon Vaclav was declared a saint, and then he was posthumously declared king by Otto the Great. canada goose outlet england

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canada goose clothing uk Then, 500 years later, someone in Finland wrote a song about the coming of spring. It was a nice, bouncy tune with nice bouncy words, but it was Finnish and nobody noticed what a good melody it was until 300 years after that, when an Englishman called John Mason Neale found the obscure Canada Goose Online Finnish tune and the obscure (in England) Bohemian saint and put the two together. Why the hell he did this, nobody really knows, but he did and it was published canada goose factory sale in 1853. Neale was an odd chap. He once wrote a history of church pews canada Canada Goose UK Outlet goose clothing uk.

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