Dear friends
I’m from Belarus, the group where I’m singing is going to prepare the Irish Christman program. Could you recommend, please, any traditional (authentic) Irish Christmas carols that are really popular in Irland.
Thank you in advance.
‘Authentic’ Irish Christmas music is somewhat sparse in the tradition, curiously enough*. Really, the only piece I know of that’s authentic, unique to Ireland and equivalent to the English language canon of Christmas music is the Gaelic song Don Oiche ud i mBeithil. There is also a repertoire of mumming and hunting the wren music and songs which belong to the season if not specifically to the day. The latter in particular is quite likely a holdover from pagan times; its only ‘Christian’ elements were quite obviously awkwardly grafted on to an older custom.
For this reason, almost all the ‘Celtic Christmas’ records and CDs that have flooded record stores in recent decades consist mainly of the same-old set of Christmas carols that are on every other English-language Christmas release, but played on ‘celtic’ instruments. Or sung by Mary Black. Google ‘celtic christmas’ and read the the track lists of the CDs you find - they’ll give you a good idea of how other people have answered your question.
*Perhaps not so curiously; the ‘english’ language corpus of Christmas carols is largely the invention of the Victorian-era English & german middle classes. The nineteenth century was not kind to Ireland, and it may well be that the Irish middle class had bigger problems on its plate.