George Hayter - Church urged to use popular carols at Christmas

It’s still only September so most people are not yet wondering whether their local church will choose classics like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Hark! The Herald’ for its annual carol service this Christmas.

Nativity services are lovely occasions. People enjoy standing up and singing carols loud. Everyone gets exhilaration from being in a full church at full power.

Carol services are Britain’s most popular regular worship. Church of England statistics show that two million people attended Christmas services in 2023, compared to weekly average attendance of just 693,000. For any place where Anglicans congregate, from dinky parish church to soaring cathedral, the annual carol service is its best opportunity to recruit regular church-goers, and to put the brakes on declining church attendance.

Its carol service is a church’s shop window. The nostalgic annual event allows the public to see, feel – and also hear – what their local church has to offer.

I hardly ever attend a church service and when I do it’s Christmas. Nearly always I am disappointed. Instead of popular carols like the ones I’ve mentioned, I find the programme is Christian songs unfamiliar to me. Usually I sense they are unfamiliar to everyone else, too, because invariably the singing to this sort of material is muted. Often members of the choir seem to be the only ones confident enough to make much sound.

Me, and the rest of the congregation I suspect, are left wishing they could get their teeth into ‘Good King Wenceslas’ or ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’. And no doubt boys and girls are disappointed when they are denied children’s favourite ‘Away in a Manger’.

Particularly disappointing is when a popular carol is listed on the hymn board and hopes are high, yet when the organ strikes up it turns out that the carol’s words have been set to an alien tune which no-one knows.

Over the last five years national church attendance may have edged up but still the long-term trend is down. I think the decline began slowly in the 1920s and gathered speed in the 60s, resulting in more and more churches closing. Attendance decline has also hit Catholicism, and ‘free’ churches such as Methodism. Over the last 100 years the only growth sector in communal Christian worship has been the Pentecostal ‘new churches’. It may be significant that these growing churches tend to emphasise popular music.

To see ancient Church of England churches closing is upsetting. They have always played a social role, bringing individuals together and cementing communities through worship, events and other contact.

In almost every Hampshire village or town, the church is the most cherished building architecturally. Most are centuries old and many are at least part-Norman. You could say that intricate church buildings are the main cultural thread holding England together.

Helping any one church to ensure the popular appeal of its carol service is largely a matter of making sure that the service is in the right hands. I believe that many clergy, church officials and organists suffer from a handicap. They have forgotten what a popular carol is. Many of them are so wrapped up in more sophisticated church music that they have become aficionados. So they are bored by the humble carols that we all enjoy, like ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’ What they prefer are obscure or newly-composed Christmas songs that leave the rest of us cold.

Unfortunately these ecclesiastical music experts assume they are doing the congregation a favour by selecting an hour of their unusual choice of music.

Around this time of year, vicars and rectors start to plan their yuletide programme. So I would urge anyone attending their local church to present a list of their favourite carols, perhaps reminding officials which carols ordinary people don’t just love, but need.