We’re up in New Jersey to spend Christmas with Amy’s family this long weekend, and my mother-in-law asked me what my favorite Christmas carols were. This was my answer, although I guess none of these are really carols:

From American composer Morten Lauridsen, his Grammy-nominated setting of O Magnum Mysterium, which I sang for Candlelight Carols in 2006.

Somewhat less religious and much more forceful, Lauridsen’s setting of Robert Graves’s Lament for Pasiphaë — a melody I would love to see as a setting for “Silent Night”:

One of the songs we sang for this year’s Candlelight Carols was The Work of Christmas, Dan Forrest’s setting of a poem by Howard Thurman:

And from the mists of history, a medieval chant of a legend of Saint Nicholas, Reno Erat Rudolphus:

Merry Christmas!