There are many words in our traditional Christmas carols that are archaic, that is, surviving from an earlier period. The following words have the characteristics of the language of the past and survive chiefly in specialized uses in present-day English.
Yule is used as an informal, warm, and old-fashioned synonym for Christmas in songs, poems, and greeting cards. Jol, in ancient Norse, was the name of the ancient winter solstice festival that pre-dated Christianity. As the Christmas holiday became the most important December religious observance in Medieval England, it displaced pagan celebrations and Yule began to be used with the new meaning. Yuletide is another word used for the Christmas season.
Bing Crosby, among many others, sang, “We wish you the merriest, the merriest, the merriest Yule cheer.” The Christmas Song begins with, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, Yuletide carols being sung by a choir.” Deck the Halls sings, “Troll the ancient Yuletide carol, Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.”
Tidings sometimes get mistaken for ‘best wishes to you’ or ‘happy greetings to you.’ But tidings mean news. According to Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1755, tidings indicate an account of something that has happened. The King James Version of the Bible records the famous Christmas passage in St. Luke as “Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
“Good tidings we bring to you and your kin, good tidings for Christmas, and a happy new year,” is used in We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Carolers sing out in God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, “O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy!”
Yon, a shortened form of yonder, means at some distance or over there. William Shakespeare used yon over thirty times in his plays, about half as frequently as he used yonder. Yon is used to indicate something that you can see and point toward.
The traditional Christmas carol Silent Night declares, “Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright Round yon virgin mother and child.” It’s a deliberately nostalgic choice of words.
Hark, and its cousin hearken, denote to listen. Both hark and hearken are still used today in the phrases ‘hark back to’ and ‘hearken back to,’ which mean to return to or remember something in the past. These terms have mostly lost the literal meaning of listen, replacing it with remember. They derive from the call “hark back,” formerly used when hunting with dogs, meaning to return along the path or retrace the route when a scent is lost. The current meaning derives from the image of seeking an earlier path.
Hark is most famously used in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King!’”
Deck means to decorate and implies the addition of something that contributes to gaiety, splendor, or showiness. Deck morphed from the Middle English dekke, which was the covering of a ship, derived from Middle Dutch dec, meaning to cover. Deck did not come from decorate and originally had no implication of decorations. Decorate comes from the Latin decoratus, the past participle of decorare, from decus, meaning ornament. English speakers will still use the phrase ‘decked out,’ to imply dressed or decorated in a fancy way.
In the Christmas season we regularly hear, “Deck the halls with Boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la la.”
Deck the Halls also cries, “Don we now our gay apparel, fa la la la la, la la la la.”
Don means to put on, especially an article of clothing. The archaic nature of don may be related to the oddness of the entire line in the lyrics. The placement of the adverb now after the verb is formal and archaic sounding, and gay apparel is a poetic way to say party clothes. Although reminiscent of an older kind of English, don is still used today when putting on an article of clothing that is something other than dressing in your usual way. People don a uniform, don a costume, and don a mask. Don is actually a contraction of ‘do on.’ Just as doff is a contraction of ‘do off.’ Doff is still used in the phrase “to doff one’s hat,” removing one’s hat as a gesture of politeness or respect.
I hope this little article will give you a greater appreciation of the text of some of our traditional Christmas carols as you sing and hum them this Christmastide.
