19 December: O Come All Ye Faithful

Today is A Christmas Carol Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about O Come All Ye Faithful:

1. The original lyrics of the song were in Latin, and it was called Adeste Fideles.

2. Nobody knows for sure who wrote the Latin version. It has been attributed to St. Bonaventura, the 13th century Italian scholar, King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), and the Cistercian order of monks.

3. It was set to music by John Wade, a British exile living in France after fleeing the Jacobean rebellion. He was a music teacher and also copied hymn manuscripts in beautiful calligraphy. In 1751 he published a printed compilation of his manuscript copies, Cantus Diversi pro Dominicis et Festis per annum. Adeste Fideles was one of them, and this was the first time it appeared in print. It’s even possible Wade was the one who wrote the words.

4. It was more than 100 years later, in 1853 that the carol was first translated into English, by the Reverend Frederick Oakeley.

5. His version, nevertheless, wasn’t exactly as we sing it today. Oakeley originally titled the song "Ye Faithful, approach ye".

6. Professor Bennett Zon, the head of the department of music at Durham University believes that this carol might not be about Jesus Christ at all, but about Bonnie Prince Charlie. He argues that “Fideles” was a term used for faithful Catholic Jacobites; that Bethlehem is a common Jacobite cipher for England; and “Regem Angelorum” is a pun on angels and Anglorum, meaning the English. Therefore, Wade’s lyrics were really saying 'Come and Behold Him, Born the King of the English' - Bonnie Prince Charlie. Perhaps it is no coincidence that during the mid-18th century some English Roman Catholic liturgical books placed Adeste Fideles next to prayers for the would-be king in exile.

7. O Come All Ye Faithful is reputed to be the favourite Christmas carol of President Dwight D Eisenhower. It was also a favourite of President Thomas Jefferson, in its original form of Adeste Fideles.

8. There are actually eight verses, although in modern times we usually only sing three or four. Eight verses is rather too long. One of the omitted verses is sometimes sung at Epiphany, while the verse beginning “Yea, Lord we greet Thee” is usually reserved for Midnight Mass or Christmas Day.

9. Adeste Fideles is traditionally the final anthem during Midnight Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

10. The tune is sometimes used by impatient people at any time of year, to chant “Why are we waiting?”

Character birthday

Leopold Smythe-Warner, leader of the band of punk villains known as the Demolition Squad. Leopold was the illegitimate son of flighty debutante Caroline Smythe and Irish labourer Liam Warner. When Caroline told Liam she was pregnant, he fled back home to Ireland. Caroline managed to convince a somewhat dim upper class man called Peregrine Chalmers-Stone into believing the child was his, and he agreed to marry her. Leopold was sent to a good public school where he was the school bully and was eventually expelled for smoking and adopting a Mohawk hairstyle. His mother told him, in her fury, that Peregrine was not his father and that his father was an Irish labourer. Leopold adopted the name Smythe-Walker and went to Ireland to find his father, enamoured by the idea of having working class roots. Liam, however, had returned to education and earned a degree and a middle class desk job. Disillusioned, Leopold returned to England and became involved in the criminal punk scene in London. Through Liam, he is a cousin of Superwil, but there is no love lost between the cousins.