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The choir of King's College Cambridge performs the traditional Christmas concert
Credit: Benjamin Sheen
The nation has spoken, the list is in, and Songs of Praise yesterday revealed the UK’s Top 10 Favourite Christmas Carols. We sing them in churches, chapels, streets and schools every year, wrap presents and decorate our Christmas trees to their accompaniment, know all the words by heart – but how much do we know about the stories behind them? 
Here are just some of the histories and controversies, the secret political messages and famous names attached to your favourite carols. 
10. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
It’s a rare carol that swaps cradles and shepherds for “Satan’s tyranny” and “death’s dark shadows”, and perhaps that’s the appeal of this wonderfully brooding, solemn hymn. There’s no exuberant rejoicing in a 15th-century melody that may have originally been used as processional music for burial rites. The words, a colourful translation of a Latin antiphon, were written by 19th-century clergyman John Mason Neale, who also gave us Good King Wenceslas and Good Christian Men, Rejoice.

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