A return to the Christmas Carol Audit

For the first time in a while I went to several carol services this Christmas. I've previously blogged about which carols are most likely to be sung - my most recent post was in 2019. I went to four carol services this year, so felt that gave me a useful number of data sources. There was some significant variety as well.

The four singalong events were:

1. Carols in the Pub, at The Grange Pub in Cardiff, organised by Grace Church 
2. The Grange Gardens Carol Service, organised by the Cardiff Council Park Rangers in conjunction with Friends of Grange Gardens and other community groups. Music was provided by the brass band of the Grangetown Corps of the Salvation Army with input from Grace Church and Eglwys Anghor.
3. Christmas Eve midnight communion service at Christchurch, an Anglican Church in Bayston Hill, near Shrewsbury (where I was spending Christmas)
4. Christmas Day service at Barnabas Community Church in Shrewsbury

Carols in the Pub at The Grange

Services at Christchurch and Barnabas have featured in previous audits, so there is some consistency there. The formats were a bit different. Carols in the Pub featured an online song sheet, played in request order, with a reprise of the most popular songs. 

Grange Gardens

There were some new songs featured in the combined set lists of the services. These were mainly popular Christmas songs, like We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells. However, the Anghor church led a carol in Welsh at the Grange Gardens service, called Hwiangwrdd Mair (Suia'r Gwynt), which translates as Mary's Lullaby (Gentle Breeze). There are now over 40 carols and songs on my database, with 21 only featuring in one service. 

Christmas Eve midnight service

Joy to the World was a popular choice this year, featuring in three of the services. On Christmas Day we sang an 'updated' version with an additional chorus that was completely unnecessary. There were also a few more added lines in a 'bridge' in the song which borrowed the melody from Ode to Joy. This may have been an homage to the climactic scene at the end of the well known Christmas movie, Die Hard, but it irritated me. It's bad enough when people take it upon themselves to 'improve' classics, but then to cheat and use someone else's tune seems insultingly lazy.

Christmas Day service

Yet again, the most popular carol, featuring in all four services, was O Come All Ye Faithful. This was already the leading song in my little audit and has now extended its lead. In fact, of the 13 services I have listed on my spreadsheet, there was only one service where O Come All Ye Faithful didn't feature. 

Here is the top ten table, with this year's carols included:

Good Christians All Rejoice is a mainstay of the Christchurch midnight communion services - I have three of these services listed in my audit now and it has featured three times. In the Bleak Midwinter is my least favourite carol in the list. With any luck, some other carol will get really popular and replace it in the top ten!

See previous Christmas Carol audits along with over a decade of Christmas Card Audits on my dedicated page!

The Grangetown Zoo goes Jurassic

There was a dinosaur theme for the Grangetown Zoo community art project this year, and Cathy provided another awesome exhibit for our window.

...complete with crucial details in a zoo information panel.

I was more involved in the zoo experience this year, helping to set up, man and take down the stalls that were set up in our local park, Grange Gardens, which was guarded by more prehistoric beasties. 

I also had a stint in a dinosaur suit - as seen in this picture.

Another stall was being run by staff from the National Museum of Wales, who had dinosaur fossils for kids to handle, including a tooth from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

There was a trail of activities and art installations around Grangetown. It was a super-hot day and I had important dinosauring duties so didn't get to see much of the trail. But the great thing about this project is the way it creates art that sticks around. So a few days later I got to see this large scale mural of some dinosaur descendants on the side of The Grange pub.

And so that was the third and most dinosaur-tastic Grangetown Zoo weekend. Roll on next year!

Play offs in the pub

I went to The Grange pub last night to watch the mighty Shrews take on MK Dons in the League Two play offs and Sky’s surprisingly unpatronising coverage of a fairly dull, if fast-paced, scoreless draw. The pitch, now free of ducks and even swans, was muddy, but held up reasonably well in what will be the last ever Town game on it.

I did feel nostalgic though, as the cameras panned around a ground I know so well, lingering on the crumbling terraces, the trees above the stands, and the parochial advertising hoardings, while the commentators dutifully reminded us that this was the last game at Gay Meadow after 97 years…

So farewell then, the family stand, where as a lucky mascot I watched Town decimate Grimsby in the old second division; goodbye Christmas Steel Stockholders, the blue ad sign on the Wakeman End where me and Jim used to stand during our sixth form years; arrivederci the Riverside, with its tiny snack bar and stinky bogs.

It’s the end of an era. And I watched it live on Sky in a run down pub where no one cared. Except me.