The Penguin Book Of Christmas Carols

The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols (1965) by Elizabeth Poston (Penguin)
ISBN: none | Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Christmas carols are, technically, music. In practice they are a seasonal weather system: they arrive whether you invited them or not, they linger in your head for weeks, and they can trigger powerful emotional responses ranging from “Ah, lovely” to “If I hear that again I will move to a hut and live on lentils.” The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols is the elegant little field guide to this annual phenomenon — a Penguin paperback that assumes (quite reasonably) that if we’re all going to be dragged into a festive sing-along, we might as well do it properly.

Edited by Elizabeth Poston, it’s part songbook, part cultural time capsule, and part gentle reminder that the British approach to Christmas has always involved a curious mixture of joy, restraint, and the unspoken agreement that everyone will sing enthusiastically while also looking as though they’re not making a fuss. Here you’ll find the familiar standards that have been haunting school halls and draughty churches since time immemorial — but also the deeper cuts, the older tunes, the ones that make you think: Ah yes, a carol that sounds like snow, candle smoke, and the faint risk of frostbite.

What makes this book quietly brilliant is that it doesn’t treat carols as disposable background noise for supermarket tills. It treats them as proper things — with history, variety, and a certain stern beauty. This is Christmas when it still had a bit of edge: shepherds freezing on hillsides, midwinter darkness, bells, and the occasional lyric that suggests everyone is one verse away from joining a medieval procession through the woods. There’s something reassuring about that. Modern Christmas is all tinsel and gadgets; old Christmas at least acknowledges it’s cold and you’re tired and the pudding is probably too heavy — and then it hands you a tune anyway.

It’s also the ideal book for people who like to be prepared. You can keep it on the shelf all year, smug in the knowledge that when December hits and someone says, “Shall we sing a few?”, you won’t be reduced to the classic British carol-singing technique: mumbling loudly on the chorus and hoping your confidence carries you through the verses. With this, you can go full connoisseur. You can be the person who says, “Actually, there’s a better version of that,” and then immediately regrets becoming that person.

Condition is Good, which is exactly what you want in a carol book: something that looks as though it has survived a few seasons — opened, propped up on a piano, passed along a pew, or rescued from a box of decorations with a bauble stuck to the cover. It’s festive, practical, slightly earnest, and completely unbothered by trends — like a true Penguin.

Perfect for choirs, families, reluctant participants, and anyone who secretly loves the moment when the room finally finds the same key and the air fills up with that unmistakable Christmas feeling: tradition, nostalgia, and the unstoppable approach of mince pies.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where even December gets a second-hand glow.

Keep browsing: See more Music books Other books by Elizabeth Poston