Despite what the Daily Mail might have you believe, nobody has banned Christmas. You can find relentlessly secular “inclusive” celebrations, you can be all middle-aged and middle class and attend (or even take part in) a rendition of Handel’s glorious bit of English Protestant triumphalism or simply make your solitary church visit of the year and sing a few carols with plenty of gusto regarding the tradition, but scant enthusiasm for what the words are saying.

Everyone tends to think carols are all ancient and timeless and that you’re singing songs that were old even when the Victorian urchins in old-fashioned Christmas cards were singing them.

In truth, only a handful of the carols that are still in use are more than 200 years old. Carols, like so many other Christmas traditions were mostly a Victorian invention, along with Christmas trees, Christmas cards and Post Office adverts saying "Post Early for Christmas". And once you get past verse one of anything, you’re into a combination of tortured rhymes and theological complexity that are gibberish to most people. I mean, “Lo! He abhors not the virgin’s womb”? Really?

Maybe that’s why genuinely ancient ones with little or no religious content such as ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ or ‘I Saw Three Ships’ are still so popular. The latter was collected in different versions from all over England and Scotland and may or may not be some oblique reference to wise men bearing gifts. The cult of the Three Kings of Cologne was popular in the middle ages - the tombs of three rich men were found at Cologne Cathedral and several logical obstacles were successfully negotiated to assume they must be the Magi, who presumably took angelic advice to go home by a different route to escape Herod very seriously indeed! The cult was certainly big in Bristol in the 15th century when John Foster endowed his almshouses and dedicated the glorious little chapel at the top of Christmas steps to them

‘Course if you’re a true blue Bristolian, there’s only one song in town, Charles Wesley’s ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” Charles (whose 300th birthday is in 2007) spent some time with his bro’ John in Bristol and the hymn was first published by the Bristol printer and journalist Felix Farley in 1739.

Hark! The herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new-born King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!"
Joyful, all ye nations, rise.
Join the triumph of the skies.
With angelic hosts proclaim,
"Christ is born in Bethlehem!"
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new-born King."

It was supposedly inspired by the sound of church bells when Wesley was walking to church one Christmas morning. The original version, entitled 'Hark How All the Welkin Rings' ('welkin' being an old word meaning sky or heaven) went through several re-writes. As far as we know, it was first sung in the 19th century to the same tune as Wesley's Easter masterpiece 'Christ the Lord is Risen Today'. The modern version came about when organist William Cummings adopted it to a tune by German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn had stipulated that the music, which he had written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press and which he described as "soldier-like and buxom", should never be used for religious purposes.

Go up the road a bit, and you can sort of include this one in the local canon:

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

The words were written by the eccentric and depressive Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) but not published until after her death. It became a huge hit after being published in the English Hymnal in 1906 with music by Gustav Holst. Holst's tune was called 'Cranham' and was supposedly composed at the Cotswold village of the same name.

Back with the Three Kings, fast-forward to the feast of the Epiphany, and you get:

As with gladness, men of old
Did the guiding star behold
As with joy they hailed its light
Leading onward, beaming bright
So, most glorious Lord, may we
Evermore be led to Thee.

The words were probably written on the evening of January 6 1858 by William Chatterton Dix as he was recovering from a serious illness. It was later put to music written by the German composer Conrad Kocher, a tune which Dix disliked intensely.

Dix was born in Bristol in 1837. His father, a surgeon, was also a scholar of the life and works of Bristol boy-poet Thomas Chatterton (hence William's middle name). Dix the elder was also a wastrel, alcoholic and composer of some truly atrocious verse (“Bristol’s McGonagall”, according to one local historian). William studied at Bristol Grammar School but spent most of his career as manager of a marine insurance company in Glasgow. He was also a devout high Anglican and an enthusiastic composer of religious lyrics. He published over 40 hymns of his own as well as translating Greek Orthodox lyrics. He died in Cheddar in 1898 and is buried at Cheddar parish church.

But for the best Victorian carol by a mile (in my humble) you need to go to the edge of Dartmoor and meet my great hero the Squarson of Lewtrenchard, the only person living or dead I would swap places with:

The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame
"All hail" said he "thou lowly maiden Mary,
Most highly favored lady," Gloria!

That’s the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, the square and parson – landowner and vicar – at Lewtrenchard in Devon. He was a scholar, folklorist, linguist, novelist, architect, artist and teacher. ‘Gabriel’s Message’ is his own very loose translation of a Basque carol. His most famous song, 'Onward Christian Soldiers', was knocked out in 15 minutes for a children's Whit Monday procession. What a dude!

In school, we thought that last line was “most highly-flavoured gravy”. And now we shall all sing, “We Three Kings of Leicester Square”.

Merry Christmas to one and all. And may the new calendar year of the Common Era meet or exceed all its agreed performance indicators.