Bethlehem Carols Unpacked

A review by Church Music Quarterly

02 March 2009

What price good organist/clergy relationships? The answer is simple - it is the cost of this book. Give your clergy this book as a present and he/she will be your friend for life. Putting a new slant on the Christmas story is a perennial problem for clergy and musicians alike, especially when preparing Christmas liturgy for small children and indeed for young people in general.

As the subtitle suggests, eleven of the best known carols are 'unpacked', in terms of the story behind the carol, the biblical story of the carol and the meaning of the carol. Biblical links and quotations are also provided.What makes this book so useful is the subsequent 100 or so pages where the authors give creative ideas for using and illustrating the carols by means of poetry, drama and indeed all the human senses. Some of these dramas are quite short and would be suitable for use during a carol service to highlight a particular carol. Others are longer and would make the basis for an all-age talk/sermon or as an alternative to the traditional nativity story. Many of the dramas use props, mostly home-made or simple to find though a bag of fresh hay might be difficult to find in urban areas in December. There are often sound, visual and other sensory effects together with movement and actions ideal for the young. The imagery used is mainly contemporary with pizza, mobile phones and television all making an appearance.

Not being directly based on the nativity story, 'Good King Wenceslas' is a carol sometimes hard to fit into a traditional carol service.Here the authors give useful ways of incorporating this tale of love and generosity into almost any Christmas service.

The book is co-authored by BibleLands, purveyor of the well-known Bethlehem Carol Sheet. This is a (150 year old) charity who support a variety of projects in the Middle East and one of the chapters in the book suggests ways in which you might support or raise the profile of their work through the use of carols.

I have already given a copy to my vicar, not to curry favour you understand as our relationshp is good, but because this is the sort of imaginative use of traditional material that those of us who plan all-age worship so desperately need.

Rating: Review by: John Henderson -