Christmas Tunes

I was listening to Burl Ives in the car today and I was thinking about all of the great Christmas songs; ‘Deck the Halls’, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Santa Claus is Coming’ to Town’.. you know all of the greats.. and I was thinking about how you couldn’t, with any ease, name the person who wrote those songs. It’s almost like they weren’t written but instead they just came from somewhere else. They’ve become so ubiqitous and commonplace that to think that someone actually sat down and penned the words to ‘Silver Bells’ seems somehow impossible.