Who does not know them, the timeless Christmas classics such as Nu zijt wellekome (Now You Are Welcome) or Hoe leit dit kindeken (How Lies This Little Child). These centuries-old songs are firmly embedded in our collective memory and remain very much alive today. Although Christmas is a Christian festival, these carols are not liturgical church music in the strict sense. Rather, they originated in a context of private devotion –more in parlours and cloisters than in churches. Numerous medieval and early modern song manuscripts and printed collections circulated within urban and bourgeois milieus.

In both language and melody, these carols closely resemble folk songs: simple, accessible, and designed for communal singing. They are not meant as virtuosic solo works but as group performances expressing unity and shared devotion. As such, they have endured through the centuries, transmitted orally across generations. Songs originating in the 15th or 17th centuries, recorded ‘from the people’ in the 19th century, still appear in the repertoires of contemporary Christmas choirs.

Strikingly, these popular carols scarcely made their way into the art music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Flemish polyphonists and their patrons, even those who remained in the Low Countries, composed no music based on Dutch-language carols. Exceptions, such as O admirabile commercium by Johannes Regis or certain organ works by John Bull, prove the rule. The gap between popular simplicity and the sophistication of polyphony or the expressive language of the Baroque remained considerable. A rare exception are the Cantiones Natalitiae of the 17th century – polyphonic Christmas songs composed by local organists and choirmasters.