Introducing Christmas Praise!
October 20, 2022We’re delighted to let you know that we have published our new music book, Christmas Praise! We have been working on this over the course of this year, and we hope it will prove to be a real asset to churches as you prepare for Christmas.
Christmas has a special place in Christian worship. The first coming of Christ is the great revelatory event in salvation history and has always moved Christians to sing the praises of Christ. We have therefore set out to produce a trusted and diverse collection of carols, advent hymns and modern songs to enrich local church worship. It is twenty-two years since we published the original Praise! hymnbook, and the original book’s Christmas selection was by necessity limited for space. A new book gives more scope for a wider selection of old and new.
Within this collection you will find the essential classics, such as Hark! the herald angels sing (with descant for verse 3) and Silent night, as well as more traditional carols such as Good Christians all, rejoice and On Christmas night all Christians sing. We have reworked the words of O holy night to enrich the theme of redemption, and a few traditional items have a transforming new tune, some written specially for this book. As well as many modern items that are well known, we have included recent discoveries such as Comfort and joy, Welcome home and O come, all you unfaithful. Several items are best suited as performance pieces for a church singing group in a carol service. We have also included several children’s songs with Christmas family services in mind.
Christmas Praise! is a spiral-bound music book, containing the piano score for each item. We will also be publishing a range of additional resources on our website, rolling out over the coming weeks. While the piano score is in the book, the lyrics, alternative arrangements, choral settings, and other resources will provide an online treasure trove for you to explore and download, alongside the more than 1300 items we have already published online in our existing collection.
You can order your copy now, where you can also see a full list of contents. We hope that a new book will increase traffic to our website, as well as raising the profile of our work across the UK and beyond.