A New Twist on Some Old Songs.

Evergreen Presbyterian Church has two Christmas Eve services. We have the “usual” candle light service at 7 pm. This is the service where the choir will sing two songs. It is so great to have the “individual” candles lit for the singing of Silent Night. For our second service we gather at the church (at 10:45 pm) and then travel about a quarter of a mile to a near-by barn. At the barn we have the service we call Christmas Eve at the Stable. At this service people sit on bails of hay, it is cold and dark, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and we sing a mixture of Christmas carols and other worship songs. There are people who attend this service who do not attend anything else at Evergreen throughout the year.

For the past several years we have been singing “newer” arrangements of the Christmas carols at our Saturday night services. The “melodies” are the same—just slightly different chord progressions or timings. (Note: my wife hates it when people change Christmas carols—or hymns for that matter—and she does not mind what we do with the Christmas carols.) At last year’s candle light service we did our newer versions of the songs—most people loved them. This year, we will only be doing the newer versions of about half of the songs.

If everything goes right we will be recording each of the “newer” versions and putting them on this blog—along with the chord sheets of the music (sorry—there are no piano scores, our pianist plays from the chord sheets).

The songs we have updated are:

• Joy to the World
• O Holy Night
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
• Silent Night
• O Come All Ye Faithful