Broken Claw's Christmas Carols

My family has always enjoyed singing, whether it was in the church choir, the school chorus, the college glee club, and even at home. While driving in the car, at picnics or family dinners, my father was ready and able to lead everyone in a song, no accompaniment necessary. The same is especially true at Christmas. Our traditional Christmas dinner at the home of my brother is never complete without a sing-a-long. We all know the tunes and harmony, but sometimes the words fail us, especially to those additional verses we rarely hear. I am reminded of a skit on the old Saturday Night Live show, where John Belushi's character tries to lead his Knights of Columbus in a Christmas carol. No matter which song he picks, everyone sings the first line, but they quickly fade on the second. So I made it my project to print out lyrics for our Christmas dinner. Over a period of years I added more and more songs, as I was able to acquire them. The first ones came from our church hymnal. Others I meticulously transcribed by listening to recordings over and over. If I couldn't understand what they were singing, I would just right down what it sounded like and then try to figure it out in context. I can't tell you how many times I listened to It's Beginning To Look before I figured out that a bissel a shoes is actually a pistol that shoots! Even today I pride myself in being able to recite all five verses of Good King Wenceslas and all four verses of Jingle Bells. Today of course, you can make your own compilation much more easily by searching the Web. Nevertheless, here is my collection of lyrics to traditional Christmas carols and seasonal songs in simple text format, without any blinking lights or dancing reindeer. Feel free to download them for your own Christmas party, caroling group, or just to sing along to the stereo. But remember...

My definition of traditional songs are those which you might hear at a children's, school, church, or community concert, or those which have been recorded by numerous artists. In fact, most of these songs I have heard live when either I or someone from my family was participating in the performance. So if you're looking for the words to a new song by your favorite pop or country star, you won't find it here. Titles appearing in italics are duplicates, included for your convenience. The links will open as a plain text file. From there you can print or save the file as you wish. Use your browser's Back button to return. As with any traditional song, especially those which are translated from other languages, exact wording may vary. If you have a particular phrase in mind, but don't know which song it comes from, you can use this text box to search through all of the carols. Just type one or two keywords (skip words like the or of) and press Search. You can also use this feature to find out how many songs contain a certain word like joy, or snow, or mistletoe!

• If you find this page helpful, feel free to leave a comment on my Blog.
• For Windows users who wish to download all of the files at once, I have a self-extracting archive file.
• If you need some basic instruction to print a song sheet, see my brief Print Help page.
• If you're looking for the libretto to Händel's Messiah, I recommend the Opera Glass at Stanford University.
• If you're looking for computer music (midi) files, I recommend the Christmas Connection.

A few years ago I loaded the CD player with a rack of Christmas CDs and set it to Random Play. One of the CDs was Händel's Messiah. Imagine my amusement when the stereo played, "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying: Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus..."

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