Well, maybe for ten months of the year, it goes into hibernation - but you know it’ll be back next November at the latest, and it’ll include the same songs it has for your entire life. It’s music for the most wonderful time of the year, even if it always makes you cry.Īnd it never goes away. It evokes a visceral, nearly oppressive sentimentality, one fortified and strengthened by a lifetime’s worth of associated holiday memories - personal, familial, romantic, nostalgic. The things that make Christmas songs great - whether carols, old pop standards or newer enduring hits - are most of the same things that make pop great in general: emotional connection, universal relatability, unshakeable catchiness.īut Christmas music has a wavelength entirely its own, shared by an overwhelming majority of its most recognizable classics: a sort of sublime yearning that’s at once profoundly saddening and deeply comforting. The invitation to all is just to ‘come and adore …’ The repetition of this one line builds emphasis and a persuasion to forget what is holding us back, to let go of all else that might be occupying our minds, and to just ‘come.’ To take a step from one place to another, whether physically or spiritually, where we can simply ‘adore Christ the Lord.There’s a reason that listeners seem to get more anxious every year for the Christmas music season to start: Nothing else feels quite like it.

It takes us to the fields of Bethlehem, and reminds us that Jesus’ birth was proclaimed “by a great company of the heavenly host … praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests'” (Luke 2:13).

It’s an invitation to join in with the praise and worship of heaven - to remember that Jesus gave up his heavenly home to become flesh for us. It’s a simple carol that tells the story of the Christ child and encourages us to join with the angels in celebrating and declaring the birth of our Savior: Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above!

It remained a Latin masterpiece for 100 years before being translated into English by Frederick Oakley. This carol, originally known as ‘Adeste Fidelis’, was most likely written by John Francis Wade, a Catholic artist.

Come all ye faithful lyrics