Sing “Noel, Noel”
Christmas Carols, a world tradition

Every year, when the Advent and the Christmas period is coming, at the radio, on the tv, on the web people start to listen to these songs about snow, snowmen, bells, the Nativity.. those songs are the proof that Christmas Eve is very near. But each of us has memories about Christmas and Christmas Carols (everyone when there is a bells’ sound think about ‘Jingle Bells’, don’t they?) and each of us has some parents or grandparents that at the lunch time on Christmas, when all the relatives are at the table, tells about their Christmas’ memories, the songs that at their time people sang.. so Carols are the tradition par excellence of this magic period of the year, but they aren’t so recent.                                                                                                    
Thousand years ago there weren’t Christmas Carol but there were pagan songs sung at the Winter Solstice. Soon Christians introduced Christian songs in latin that had to be sing instead of pagan ones but only with St Francis of Assisi they started to be sing in the people’s language. From that time people could understand and enjoy those songs and the tradition of Christmas Carols spread out even in other countries of Europe like France, Spain, Germany.. But when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England the celebration of Christmas stopped. Of course in secret people continued to sing those songs and when the ‘Waits’ (official carol singers) began to sing at Christmas Eve those joyful songs re-gained popularity. It was the Victorian period and many orchestras and choirs started to set up in the cities of England and people wanted Christmas songs to sing. 
Nowadays in Britain people still go house to house singing carols and collecting money for charity, this is costume is called ‘Carol singing’.
Singers and bands give importance to that kind of songs too. Indeed lots of singers produce CDs with Christmas carols sing from themselves. Because there are some songs that everyone knows and sings like “Jingle Bells” “little Drummer boy” “Holy night” “White Christmas” “Last Christmas”.. It’s true that the carols change from Country to Country but it’s also true that the American and the English ones are the most known around the world.