Here’s one that’ll soothe your soul–Angels We Have Heard on High, an instrumental by Rick Foster. Requested by Joshua, and entered into the carol contest: you might want to play this just before bedtime.
Tag: Christmas 2020
By Request, ‘Adeste Fideles’ (Pavarotti)
Phoebe asked for Adeste Fideles, so I have given her Pavarotti at Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal.
Our Second Annual Christmas Carol Contest is off to a good start–I hope many of you enter. If you’ve never made a hymn request before, now’s as good a time as any to start.
By Request, ‘Joy to the World’
Requested by Erlene, Joy to the World–and I can’t do better than Nat King Cole, can I?
Our Second Annual Christmas Carol Contest has begun; and don’t worry if the carol you want to request has already been posted. And don’t worry about us running out of carols!
Sing for Christmas!
By Request, ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’
I hope these carols move you as they move me: open up our hearts, and let the light of Jesus Christ shine in.
Back to our carol contest! Requested by Erlene, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Written in 1849 by Edmund Sears, performed here by Blackmore’s Night: vocals by Candice Night.
May God grant this Christmas extraordinary power to draw us to our Savior and our King.
By Request, ‘We Three Kings’
We Three Kings, sung by Steven Curtis Chapman–I’d never heard this before. Requested by TheWhiteRabbit, it’s entered into our Second Annual Christmas Carol Contest.
You can enter as often as you like, and the prize will go to whoever suggests the carol that gets the most views on the day it was requested. We had a lot of fun with this last year!
By Request, ‘Away in a Manger’
Here it is, the first entry in our Christmas Carol Contest! Requested by Erlene, Away in a Manger. This rendition is sung by Alan Jackson.
What a flood of sweet memories this hymn invokes! Some of the very earliest memories I have, in fact.
If we ever needed Christmas, we need it now, in 2020.
Let the Christmas Carol Contest Begin!
G’day! Byron the Quokka here; and it’s my pleasure today to open our Second Annual Christmas Carol Contest! The winner gets an autographed book (instead of a bicycle!).
Now, how do we do this? Don’t worry, the hard part will be the scorekeeping, and if Mr. Lee thinks I’m going to do that, he’s daft! I’m just the head honcho, I don’t keep score.
Anyone can request as many Christmas carols as he or she likes: you could do it every day, if you want.
The winner will be whoever requests the carol that gets the most views on the day it was requested. Which means the lead can change hands every day, and that’s the part I plan to leave alone: let the guy with the beard do it! And again, you can enter every day, no restrictions.
Well, there is one restriction–none of those “Santa Baby” carols, stuff like that. Christmas is fun, but it’s also a serious religious festival. So “Up on the Housetop” or “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” won’t be entered in the contest. You know what I mean, he said optimistically.
Anyway… let’s go caroling!
‘For Unto Us a Child Is Born’
Christmas is coming! And we have this hymn by special request from TheWhiteRabbit: Unto Us a Child Is Born–by the London Symphony Orchestra, no less. Text from the Bible, Isaiah 9:6. Music by Handel, from The Messiah.
Don’t forget, the Christmas carol contest starts the day after tomorrow.
Coming Up: Christmas Carol Contest
Just a reminder: the day after Thanksgiving, our Second Annual Christmas Carol contest begins. We greatly enjoyed it last year; and if there was ever a year in which we need to proclaim the birth of Jesus Christ Our Lord, 2020 is it.
The prize, an autographed book, will go to whoever requests the carol that gets the most views on the day it was requested. It’ll require some alert score-keeping on my part, but it’ll be worth it. The tricky thing about that is, the score can change repeatedly. But that’s fun, too.
I’m open to suggestions, though, in case any of you have a better idea.
The contest ends Dec. 31–unless popular demand moves me to extend the deadline.
And of course everyone is welcome to enter as many times as he or she pleases.
Special Request, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’
We announced a Christmas Carol Contest yesterday, to begin the day after Thanksgiving; but Marge was quick off the mark with a request for this, Once in Royal David’s City. And there’s no such thing as a bad time for a Christmas hymn!
This rendition by the choir and congregation at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, moves me close to tears. Nothing can be that beautiful, and not be true. And the most beautiful truth of all is Jesus Christ, Our Lord.