Coventry Carol
My favorite Christmas ritual growing up was decorating the family tree. The event followed a predictable pattern: we would drag the whole family into the living room (including a reluctant younger brother and a cat or two), unbox decade’s worth of accumulated ornaments and memories, and begin lighting up the room.
But perhaps the most memorable part of the event was its soundtrack. For years, the unboxing and decorating would be accompanied by a set of cassette tapes with songs from the gauzy era that produced most of our modern holiday earworms. To my young ears, the recordings seemed to contain the very sum of Christmas music — from Barbra Streisand’s hyperactive rendition of “Jingle Bells” to the quiet of the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling.”
And, of course, Andy Williams’ inescapable “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” This song stuck with me. One of the elements of Williams’ perfect Christmas always seemed strange: “There'll be scary ghost stories / And tales of the glories / Of Christmases long, long ago.”
“Scary ghost stories?”
I would always laugh at that line. Save Ebeneezer Scrooge, for a ghost story seemed like the furthest thing from Christmas. For me, Christmas was a time of joy, beauty, and light. Sure, ghost stories have been a part of Christmas in the past, but the reference in an upbeat song about the “most wonderful” of times seemed, at best, anachronistic.
“Coventry Carol” is the ultimate Christmas ghost story, cleverly disguised as a lullaby.
While written in a minor key, many arrangements of the piece take on a gorgeous choral hymn’s quality. The repetition of the “lully lullays” can lull the listener into complacency and give the superficial impression of a nice, perhaps unusual, Christmas carol.
However, the quiet beauty of the piece gets belied by its grim subject matter. A closer look at the lyrics reveals that the song is about… murdering children?!
Indeed, this melody has a fascinating history. As Rebecca Jennings writes in Vox:
“Coventry Carol” is a reference to the Massacre of the Innocents, an event described in the Gospel of Matthew. In it, King Herod orders the execution of all male children under the age of two in Bethlehem. The story goes that Herod did this because he heard of the birth of a baby who would become the king of all Jews — news that was relayed to him by the Magi (or the three wise men referred to in the carol “We Three Kings”). Having been warned by an angel, Joseph escapes Bethlehem with Mary and the newborn Jesus to Egypt. The song, then, is a lullaby supposedly sung by the mothers of Bethlehem to their doomed sons.
Yikes.
Sufjan’s version of “Coventry Carol” leans hard into this haunting chapter in the Christmas story. It starts simple enough, with some strummed minor guitar chords that aren’t quite enough to give away what is to come. Then the instruments swell with banjo, and a lovely string line appears.
That’s when frequent Sufjan collaborator Marla Hansen joins the chorus with a quiet, harmonized repetition of the “lully lullays,” as if singing the child to sleep. It’s a tender moment, narrating the beginnings of the story: “o sisters, too, how may we do / for to preserve this day.”
Then, things get darker as Sufjan’s voice rises into the harmony: “This poor youngling for whom we sing?” Ah yes, now we get to the subject of the song: Herod’s murdered children. The melody changes from a lullaby to a sleeping baby to a mournful tribute to the dead. A ghostly vocal line, accompanied by dissonant harmonies and a musical saw, moves us truly into the realm of horror for the remainder of the song.
Through these unusual instrumental textures and the haunting vocals, Sufjan gives us the darkness that’s usually missing from this carol. Sufjan’s careful arrangement shows us the mournful mothers as they lay their children to rest.
What I love about Sufjan’s Christmas albums is that they invite us to see the season in all of its complexity. From the absurdity of “Christmas Unicorn” to the epic power of “Sister Winter,” the songs accompany us through our Christmas heartbreaks, thrills, joys — and, yes, terrors.
Sufjan’s “Coventry Carol” shows us that it’s ok to lean into the darker side of Christmas. Not everyone’s experience of the holiday season will be Holly Jolly or Wonderful, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. For every wide-eyed child opening up the perfect gift, somebody else will be experiencing their first Christmas without a loved one at their side.
And maybe this year is the perfect time to embrace our scary ghost stories of Christmas.
Paul McKean works in communications at Willamette University. His favorite Sufjan Christmas song is “Christmas in the Room.” He lives in Salem, Oregon, with his partner Jeff and his adorable dog Milo.