What is the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols – and what is the order of service?

24 December 2021, 15:12

O Holy Night – Choir of King's College Cambridge

Come Christmas Eve, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is performed by the Choir of King’s College Cambridge live from a candlelit King’s College Chapel.

Every year, the King’s College Chapel Choir performs a carol service that is broadcast on UK radio on Christmas Eve.

The service begins on Christmas Eve at 3pm. It finishes just in time for the choristers to gather round a television to watch their separate televised programme, Carols from King’s – which is broadcast on national TV at 6.15pm.

While the other carols vary from year to year, the opening carol in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is always ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, which is led by a solo chorister.

A chorister is, famously, chosen at the last second. The choirmaster – now Daniel Hyde, who succeeded the late Stephen Cleobury – decides whose voice is sounding strongest on the day and points at the chosen soloist just as the broadcast begins.

Read more: Choir of King’s College, Cambridge – who are the members and what have they recorded?

What is the order of service in 2021?

In the 2021 broadcast, the music will include June Nixon’s arrangement of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, Sally Beamish’s ‘In the Stillness’ and John Rutter’s arrangement of ‘O Holy Night’.

The congregation will join for ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’.

What is the history of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols?

Loved by millions, the Festival of Nine Lesson and Carols is a traditional part of the run-up to Christmas for many families.

The original service, first heard at King’s College Chapel in 1918, was devised by E. W. Benson, the first Bishop of Truro and later Archbishop of Canterbury.

According to his son A. C. Benson (who wrote the words to Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’), his father “arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve – nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop.”

But it was Eric Milner-White, Dean of King’s College Cambridge, who brought the service to the masses. Deciding that the Festival would be more uplifting than Evensong on Christmas Eve, he set up the Festival as an annual occurrence at King’s College Chapel and achieve instant popularity, spreading his new idea to schools, chapels and churches around the world.

The preface to a recent Order of Service stated: “Wherever the service is heard and however it is adapted, whether the music is provided by choir or congregation, the pattern and strength of the service, as Milner-White pointed out, derive from the lessons and not the music.

“‘The main theme is the development of the loving purposes of God …’ seen ‘through the windows and the words of the Bible’.”