I have twelve websites to work on today, so I’m giving you a quick, sprightly song: The Shepherd’s Pipe Carol. Written by John Rutter in 1966 when he was still a student, this is a good song to play while working, because it has a bouncy tune and lots of cheerful flute stuff going on.

It’s not that great for casual singing, though, since without the flute and piccolo it isn’t much. Here are the lyrics in case you’re determined, but I think that the first time you sing, “May I come with you, shepherd boy piping merrily?” without the pleasure of looking forward to the piping, you’ll relegate it to “Frosty the Snowman” status.

Never mind. Life is real, life is earnest, and there’s lots of work to do!

This morning we sang our Bach cantata, and it went far less badly than I had expected. We had a couple of violins, a viola, a cello, and an assortment of woodwinds, the soloists were quite good, and the choir didn’t actually give up and quit singing at any point.

If we could start each day with a rousing cantata played with chamber ensemble, we’d all do better at work, I’m sure.

The cantata in question, Bach’s cantata based on “Sleepers, Awake,” has some peculiarities. First, it’s about the five wise virgins and the five foolish ones, though the church staff spoke of “bridesmaids” rather than virgins. This cantata also uses the metaphor of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride, which we don’t do so much nowadays. Thus, the duets consist of a soprano and a bass trilling, “Come quickly!” and “I come! I come quickly!” at one another about 97 times, wrapping things up with a bit of harmonizing on the theme of eternal rapture in flowery fields. A bit different from the usual Christmas lyrics.

It’s also more focused on the second coming of Christ than on the first. Evangelical churches usually get into the second coming a lot more than we mainstream Protestants do, and yet they don’t usually embrace Advent, with its wide range of songs about the return of Christ.

The best plan may be to sing the thing in German. This would also keep us from having to sing “Where? Where? Where?” and “So, So, So” all the time, not to mention the whole “Ye maids beware” thing, which sounds as though they’re in danger, not as though they’re having to run buy more oil because they didn’t check their cupboards when they should have.

I thought, while the scripture was being read, of all the cases in which I’m like the foolish virgins, who run out of oil through poor preparation, rather than the wise virgins, who brought flasks of oil with them. I don’t ever mean to be that way, yet still it happens.

I came home and put a nice pan of Ham and Potatoes Gratinee into the over, did an hour or two of work, and then settled back down to knit presents. You can see the beginnings of a hat at left and a couple pairs of legwarmers in a welter of stuff at right.

I watched “The Nutcracker” while knitting, and then #1 son came in and we discussed Romantic British poetry and plans for Christmas Eve. He proposes a larger meat and cheese tray this year than in the past, and — since Christmas Eve is on a Saturday — opening the traditional new board game early enough that we can play it all day. Usually we have to wait for people to get home from work, but we are all free on that day, so we figure we can celebrate all day long.

For today’s song. I offer you “Love Came Down at Christmas.” I love this song, and I rather think that it is as close to a Bach cantata as most of us are likely to get while hanging around the fire at home, knitting. I like the rendition by Jars of Clay , but you need to sing it in a round if you’re going for echoes of Bach at all.

To me, this is a very pretty song,and very sweet. It is by Christina Rossetti, who may not be among the official British Romantic Poets like Coleridge and Shelley, but she was certainly romantic, and even Romantic in the sense of being a mystical nature and emotions kind of poet rather than a logical one.

We decided that #1 son is a Platonist. You don’t run into many of those these days.

“Past 3:00″ has been a good song for the whole week, first because the mornings have been frosty, and second because I haven’t been sleeping well, so I’m often up at just past 3:00. I’m prone to insomnia. It’s an early warning sign of stress for me.

However, things are going very well right now. I’m still having trouble sleeping, but I want to offer you a completely different song today: Rejoice and Be Merry. You can watch it at that link, with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Kings Singers, and dancers, and start your day off very merrily. It comes from Dorset, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, but it’s danceable and really could rang from stately to frisky, depending on your mood.

#1 daughter and I met yesterday with another larger company — or rather a small group of people with a bunch of well-funded start-ups adding up to a nice job for us. We have lots of work and feel fairly sanguine about being able to pay the boys’ tuition. We’re hiring a little bit of help so I can focus on the stuff that’s most fun and we can be a bit more profitable. In fact, we went Christmas shopping.

Stage 2 shoppers are still out, so it wasn’t too bad to shop, and the young woman who checked us out at the store (yes, one store) told us happily that she was going home for Christmas, so it was pleasant. #1 daughter then went out with friends, but #1 son came over for pizza when he got off work and #1 daughter returned while he was still there. We discussed shopping and presents.

I was able to do quite a bit of my shopping at handcraft markets this year, and I plan — once I get my work finished up and papers graded — to focus this weekend on making presents. It is December 10th, the HGP deadline on which we are supposed to put away all handmade gifts so we don’t get crazed. I see their point, but I’m going to stretch said point just a little.

Tomorrow is our big music in church, so I’ll also be practicing Bach’s Christmas cantata, and I’m reading Mark Schweizer’s The Christmas Cantata on my Kindle. Schweizer’s “liturgical mysteries” are fun for church musicians, and this one is (so far) less goofy and over the top than the others, so it might be a good one for non-musicians, too.

In any case, with the shopping finished and the decorations out and plenty of work to do next week, I’m ready to be festive. As soon as I finish grading those papers, which is what I shall do right now.

Today’s song is “Past 3:00,” a carol composed by George Ratliffe Woodward. The lyrics are hard to catch as you listen, possibly because we so rarely use words like “Ne’ertofore.”

Past Three O’clock a.k.a. Past 3 a Clock

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Born is a baby, gentle as may be,
Son of the eternal, Father supernal.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Seraph quire singeth, angel bell ringeth,
Hark how they rhyme it, time it and chime it.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Mid earth rejoices hearing such voices
Ne’ertofore so well caroling Nowell.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Hinds o’er the pearly dewy lawn early,
Seek the high Stranger laid in a manger.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Cheese from thy dairy, bring it for Mary,
And not for money, butter and honey.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Light out the star-land leadeth from far land,
Princes to meet him, worship and greet him.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Myrrh from full coffer, incense they offer,
Nor is the golden nugget withholden.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning,
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Thus they I pray you, up sirs nor stay you,
‘Till ye confess him, likewise and bless him.

Past three o’clock and a cold frosty morning.
Past three o’clock, good morrow masters all!

Woodward was an early 20th century guy who, like so many people of the time, was charmed by the Middle Ages. He took the chorus roughly from a traditional night watchman’s call and made the rest up, making it as medieval sounding as he could.

Linda Ronstadt has recorded this, as have The Chieftans. David Solomon has a parody. These are all fun to listen to, but this song is also fun to sing. Drums and dancing are completely appropriate.

I’m going this evening to a performance and lecture on Gregorian chant. Between now and then I have a whole bunch of work, all of it fun. Last night my 2012 planner arrived and I attempted to come up with goals for next year. There are so many from this year that I didn’t accomplish that I gave up fairly quickly, thinking it would be depressing to copy the list right into the new planner. Maybe I can get some of them done before New Year’s still.

However, I was moved to clean the kitchen and the bathrooms, so that was something.

I’ve had a stressful couple of days, or possibly weeks. Months? I noticed this particularly, I think, because the past couple of days I’ve also had Christmas concerts. So there I am singing about Santa and Jesus and snow (I’m oversimplifying, admittedly) and I’m not enjoying it nearly as much as I should because I’m grappling with Problems and Issues.

Clearly, we need some Christmas carol humor. Here’s the funny stuff I found:

•  YTF’s Ryan has a cute video pointing out the dark side of Christmas carols.
• Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days of Christmas
• Also their Christmas Can Can
• Tom Lehrer’s Christmas Carol
• And that cartoon with the reindeer singing the Drifter’s White Christmas

True, there are elements of bitterness and snarkiness, but there it is. It’s still fun.

The song for today is Purple Snowflakes by Marvin Gaye. I found a site that gave the lyrics:

Softly they fall, where do they go?
(purple snowflakes)
Cover the ground, without a sound
(gentle snowflakes)
Fall from the sky, before your eyes
(it’s so thrilling)
Blankets of light, brighten the night
(such a feeling)
They seem to say, that I’ll never miss
here to stay
We’ll be closing our door till summer
flowers bloom
Here in our midst, we’re surely blessed
(chestnuts roasting)
Over the heat, gee ain’t life sweet?
(tempters toasting)
Drifting all year, without a care
(purple snowflakes)
Cover the ground, without a sound
(love the snowflakes)
I’m sure that snowflakes, fall from the
gloom
And we’ll always remember this night,
here with you
There’s snowflakes, pretty purple
snowflakes
Snowflakes, these pretty purple
snowflakes
Here in our midst, we’re surely blessed
(chestnuts roasting)
Over the heat, gee ain’t life sweet?
(tempters toasting)
Drifting all year, without a care
(purple snowflakes)
Cover the ground, without a sound
(love the snowflakes)
I’m sure that snowflakes, fall from the
gloom
And we’ll always remember this night,
here with you
And I say snowflakes, pretty purple
snowflakes
Remember the snowflakes
And you believe it, and you
Snowflakes are falling, falling,
falling..
I got you in my arms    

I find this implausible. However, I couldn’t catch the words any more clearly than this and I have no sheet music, so who knows? I think, for example, that it’s , “We’ll be cozy and warm till summer flowers bloom” and “Drifting on air without a care,” but it does seem to say “Here in our midst,” which sure doesn’t mean anything. Suzanna Choffel sings “Here in our nest,” which makes more sense, but her diction isn’t clear enough to clarify the rest of the weird words. When you sing it today, though, consider having the snowflakes fall from the blue rather than the gloom. It’ll sound better.

Marvin Gaye had the Supremes singing the background stuff, but Choffel just has some guy muttering (what the heck is toasting?), so you could sing this when you hit the mall and get friends to mutter parts of it. You could also sing it with great drama in the kitchen while baking, and get the kids to play pots and pans like bongos while you swoop around waving your wooden spoon.

This song is from 1964 but wasn’t released until several decades later. It was written by Dave Hamilton and Clarence Paul, possibly under the influence of drugs. Maybe, though, they were in a city where it never gets really dark and the snowflakes reflect the purple streetlights. Or something.

Today I’m going to another holiday market. I like those. I try to buy handmade local gifts, and then if it gets too close to Christmas and I haven’t made enough or found enough, I have recourse to Amazon. I also hope to do housework and baking, and I have a few hours of work to do.

#1 daughter and I reviwed my work hours last night, and I’m proud to say that I mostly work 8 hour days now, and only half days on the weekends. This is progress. 

We only get Advent hymns for four weeks, and even then mostly only in church. In fact, lots of churches don’t even do them at all. This means that they are like a rare treasure of some kind, or perhaps like fresh fruit with a short growing season, or those pies you can only have at Christmastime. In other words, you have to enjoy them enough while they;re available to save up that enjoyment for the whole rest of the year.

Yesterday I had class and meetings, and I put A Robert Shaw Christmas on in the car. It contains Christmas music, for sure, but also some wonderful Advent hymns, and it was like having my eardrums and brain massaged. Not that I’ve ever had my eardrums or brain massaged, but I think that conveys the feeling of hearing these gorgeous tunes.

I therefore have two for you today. Both are English hymns from the 18th century, and both focus on the idea of Advent as a time of waiting not only for Christmas, but also for the Second Coming of Christ.

You might be amazed that this is a theme of Advent, but it is, and it is the subject of quite a few lovely hymns which are rarely sung in mainstream American churches.

Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending is rarely sung in the average Protestant church, as the words are a bit emo for us. Anglicans sing it, though, and have since 1752 when it was written. It’s very beautiful, though.

The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns  was translated from the Greek in 1907, and no one seems to know who wrote it in the Greek in the first place. While the words are sung to a couple of different tunes, both are very pretty. I’ve linked you to a major and a minor version: take your pick. Both of these are more singable that “Lo, He Comes…” so they may be the best choice for singing around the house or workplace today.

On the other hand, you may not like these stately tunes as much as I do. In that case, my alternative suggestion is Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson. I’m singing this with a community choir this weekend, but my favorite version is by Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes. To the extent that I have a favorite version. I will be really glad never to have to sing “PUMP! kin pie” again after this weekend.

This 1946 song is a lively one, though, and may be more suited to your day than the other songs I proposed.

We had sectionals at rehearsal last night. “O altos,” said the organist who led ours, “you’re so good and strong and brave!”

Frankly, it requires strength and bravery to sing Bach’s Cantata 140 on as few rehearsals as we’ve had. However, the Advent hymn “Sleepers Awake” is lovely. Hear the Incredible String Band or the Trinity College Choir singing it, and then you can sing it yourself. It’s another lovely Advent hymn, with a beautiful and complicated tune that keeps it from being sung in lots of churches, not to mention the average fireside singalong.

Bach’s cantata of this include “Wachet Auf,” a more popular tune that you probably hum along to when you hear it. When I was a child, I figured the title was “wash it off,” and I still have that somewhere in my head even though I know better now.

The sopranos were complaining last night that it’s too hard and we won’t be ready, and the director agreed. “I feel your pain more than you do,” he said, but then reminded us that the alternative was Pinkham’s Advent cantata.

I’m therefore planning to work on this at home, though so far I’ve just played it in the background while grading papers.

Today’s song is “African Noel” or “Sing Noel,” because I did Christmas in South Africa Lesson Plans over at FreshPlans, and this song is popular in South Africa. The tune appears to be from “Banuwa Yo,” a Liberian song. We sang this as “Sing Noel” in school when I was a child, I think, so the use of the Christmas lyrics to this tune has been around for quite a while, but I haven’t found an explanation of how the words and music got hooked up.

Never mind — it’s fun to sing, either by yourself or with a group.

 Laudamus Te from the Poulenc Gloria can’t really be the song of the day, because it isn’t the kind of thing you can sing in the car, even with a group of friends. It requires an orchestra. It’s what was in my mind when I woke up, though, because I was rehearsing it last night. We’re singing it in concert this weekend, and you should come if you live in my neighborhood.

Poulenc, the director told us, thought about nuns playing soccer when he wrote this movement. That’s reason enough to enjoy it.

But the Christmas song for home use today is Christmas Wrapping by Chris Butler. The lyrics tell the story of a modern romance, which is to say that there were no proper dates, they relied entirely on their cell phones, and the participants stood each other up most of the time. However, they do meet in the market on Christmas Eve, having both decided to spend the holiday alone.

In real life, if you met a guy in a random way at the beginning of the year and had a couple of misfires in the way of dates over the course of the year, and then met in Tesco on Christmas Eve, it wouldn’t work out. First, neither of you was interested enough to make any effort in the previous ten months. Second, no preparations have been made, so whichever place you go back to won’t really be decorated and the meal will be sub-par, so there’ll be nothing to help get over the awkwardness. This is only good in movies, where incompetence is apparently a major aphrodisiac.

Girls in movies are never more attractive to the hero than when they’re dropping things, getting drunk and falling down, saying stupid things, or pitching hissy fits while getting disheveled and, if possible, falling into noxious substances. Guys are at their most charming, in movies, when they get lost, mess things up, and screw up dates. In movies, being able to conduct oneself like a grownup is the mark of a villain.

In real life, competence is pretty sexy.

All that aside, “Christmas Wrapping” is a fun, catchy song. There’s hardly any tune and it’s largely spoken, so it requires no musical ability, but it’s danceable and has some cool trumpet bits that you can mime. It’s been recorded by The Waitresses, Miranda Cosgrove, the Spice Girls, and every other artist with a playground sound. Here’s a karaoke version.

You can rock out to this in your kitchen or at your desk today. Fair warning: the song is a well known ear worm, so it can be hard to get it out of your head once you start. Me, I did 8300+ steps yesterday and have sore muscles from weights. I also did the food journal, though I ate rather randomly. My internet connection was shaky all day, and that’s where I work, so there was a high frustration level. There were also lots of emails, largely stuff like, “I blew up my site,” “I lost a page from my site,” “I want the same work we talked about for half as much money,” and “Yes, the design you sent was what I asked for but now I’ve completely changed my mind.” I’ll probably listen to the Gloria. And finish the cranberry coffee cake pictured above. Best use of leftover cranberry sauce.