A Christmas Medley just for you

Origins of Carols
The word 'carol' tends to be exclusively associated with sacred songs related to Christmas, but it once had a wider meaning and referred to several different genres of music used in medieval church services across Europe. The original form alternated burdens (repeated refrains) with stanzas. The strong melody and repeated burdens meant that the carols were easier to remember. Sometimes the burden was in Latin and the verses
in the vernacular. The burden was usually sung by a chorus of singers while the stanzas were reserved for a soloist. Christmas church services in the 13th century included the performance of a similar type of song, the simpler conductus, performed in Latin, and early carols were probably used in the same way to describe stories from the Bible. Over time, the carol genre became particularly associated with the celebration of Christmas. Carols were designed to teach the Christian faith and offer a lively method of devotion. They spread across borders, carried by wandering monks and determined pilgrims, and so they became "part of the lingua franca of Christendom" (Poston, 12). As the famed musicologist E. Poston noted: "the essential genius of the carol is its communicativeness"

The exact history and use of carols are not entirely clear, as here noted
by the historian and musicologist D. Arnold: "the precise manner of
performance, as with most early song forms, is a matter of some conjecture…
originally the carol may have been a dancing song (the word probably
derives from French carole, a dance where participants formed a large
circle), certainly it was frequently sung in procession" . An alternative origin
of the word 'carol' is from the Latin choraula, which was a type of choral song. An example of a medieval carol that has survived into modernity is
Good Christian Men Rejoice (aka In Dulci Jubilo).
Played on Redpipes in the key of A maj. in the small pipe mode.