VA - Mid Winter: The Songs & Music Of Christmas And The Turning Of The Year [4CD Box Set] (2006)

Free Reed’s award-winning Revival Masters series of box-sets has so far explored the careers of some of the greatest folk and folk-rock stars (most recently, the best-selling RT – The Life & Music of Richard Thompson): their Cropredy Capers celebrated the world’s longest running folk-rock festival, while their epic Transports set told the story of the birth of Australia.

This UK label’s new October 2006 release dedicated four CDs and a 156-page book to the music and traditions of MidWinter…. the period that Americans now refer to as “the holidays”. Most of the key elements and a great many of the songs that make up what we call the Traditional Christmas began life in America, but as this set shows there are midwinter traditions which stretch back hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus – including practices both pious and pagan, which were among the first exports from Britain to the New World.
The set’s 115 recordings include music and readings from both sides of the Atlantic and cover an astounding range of traditional genres – from Sacred Harp to the Sheffield Carols, big ballads to blues, singer-songwriters and tradition-bearers, living legends and recent stars.