Doug Wyatt

12/17/2000

A sumptuous new package celebrates the songs of Christmas

Surrounded by the holiday season’s sleaziness and cheesiness, it baubles and bangles and tinsel and glitter, we’re all sometimes tempted to grouse, like Dickens’ Mr. Scrooge, that Christmas has become but "a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December."

Ronald Clancy’s "Best-Loved Christmas Carols" should banish your yuletide humbug blues.

Clancy’s sumptuous package includes a nicely illustrated book about the history of Christmas carols, a songbook of sheet music of 25 carols and a CD containing 25 of the world’s best-known carols by such musical mainstays as The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, The New York Philharmonic, The Vienna Boys Choir and the Royal Philharmonic. The package is the first in an ambitious series of planned book/audio projects titled "THE MILLENNIA COLLECTION: Glorious Christmas Music, Songs and Carols."

Clancy’s keen interest, and his prodigious research in the field, are evident throughout.

The book complements the history of beloved carols with engravings from old carol books and paintings from the world’s great museums. Where did these songs come from, anyway? Who first decked the halls, harked to those herald angels, wished us a merry Christmas and took us away in a manger? Would someone who’s really your "true love" give you a partridge in a pear tree? And who the heck was King Wenceslas? The answers are all here.

Anyone craving some holiday cheer, in short, is well advised to toss a Yulke log on the nearest flames, curl up with this engrossing history of some of the world’s most cherished tunes and pop the CD in. By the time, a few cuts in, the Royal Philharmonic Chorus is belting out "Joy to the World," you’ll feel like Scrooge after he’s finally seen the light.