Customer Reviews

Best-Loved Christmas Carols (The Millennia Collection)

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I saw the author of this book interviewed on EWTN's Bookmark and was interested in reading the book based on his insights. The book delivers, not only do you get a great overview of each carol's history, but a cd is included that has an excellent version of the carol--so you can listen and read at the same time!

This would make an excellent Christmas gift (early) for a school teacher who might be looking to give his or her students some background on the origins of popular Christmas carols.

I was looking to buy a unique gift for someone special when I heard about Best-Loved Christmas Carols. After some investigating, I purchased it and when it arrived several days later I was thrilled with it. The fine art and stunning images jump right off the pages! And it was most interesting learning about the origins of carols as I listened with great pleasure to the magnificent CD that was part of the package. This is no ordinary Christmas gift! I highly recommend Best-Loved Christmas Carols for anyone with an interest in Christmas and its music.

After having purchased and thoroughly enjoyed the first of Mr. Clancy's "Millenia Collection" - the "Best Loved Christmas Carols" - I'd like to commend its author for providing me and my family with such immense pleasure this past Christmas season. This package of beautiful musical selections and fascinating anecdotal reading will be a coffee table conversation piece and family heirloom for many Christmas seasons to come

For my money, anyone interested in learning more about Christmas carols and their origins should purchase this wonderful product. Frankly, if the rest of Mr. Clancy's "Millenia Collection" is anything close to this initial offering's breadth of historical perspective and musical offerings, all fans of Christmas music and its history should be in for a fantastic treat. I know that we can't wait to treat ourselves to more of the same, and we intend to add the others in his collection to our own family's musical library. Mr. Clancy, thank you very much!!

For anyone who loves Christmas music, this is a must book. Not only do you get a CD with the 25 most popular carols and hymns you also get the history behind each song. The history tells you where it originated and the inspiration behind writing the song. This was the second copy of this I purchased. The first one I gave as a Christmas gift, liked it so much I bought one for me any my family. I highly recommend this wonderful illustrated book.

I don't judge a Christmas history book by its cover; I judge it by the accuracy of its story of "Silent Night." This book fails -- TWICE!!!! It relates not one, but two fairytale versions of the history of "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!" One has Joseph Mohr quickly writing the words on Christmas Eve in 1818. He actually wrote the words in 1816 while assigned to a pilgrim church in Mariapfarr, Austria. The music was added in 1818 for Christmas Mass in Oberndorf, Austria.

The second fairytale even includes a "creative" quotation that has Franz Gruber asking, "Pastor, do you know that the real Christmas song is yet to be written." Right away, you know this is wrong since Fr. Mohr was never the pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf. It goes on with its fiction to tell how Mohr was inspired to write his poem after his visit to the home of a woodsman and his family.

The poem was written by Joseph Mohr two years before he came to Oberndorf where Franz Xaver Gruber was the church organist and choir director.

"Best-Loved Christmas Carols," published in 2000, is beautifully packaged and has magnificent illustrations. I really wanted it to be a great book and am very disappointed.

Going beyond its faux history of "Silent Night," let's look at the claims it relates for "The Twelve Days of Christmas." This catechism fairytale took off with great gusto across the Internet and is showing up everywhere from books to Sunday sermons in church.

The claim is that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was a secret catechism for Catholics when they were being persecuted in England. The secret code claimed that the partridge in the pear tree represented Jesus Christ, the two turtle doves represented the Old and New Testaments, and so forth. The whole thing seems silly when you realize that it wasn't just the Catholics who believed in Jesus Christ and the Old and New Testaments. All the Catholic "secrets" in the song are the exact same beliefs held by the Protestants.

Is the rest of the book worth reading? Not if you're looking for an accurate history of Christmas Carols. It would take too much time and energy to check the stories to see what may be fact mixed in with the fiction.

This book is fascinating in that it provides little known facts about the well-known Christmas carols that we hear and sing each year.