Blog Posts

Christmas Around the World Ideas

Denise Gagne

Christmas Around the World

There have been two posts this week requesting ideas for a Christmas Around the World Program. Themes publishes two really good collections that could be your entire program or selections that you use in it.

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Festivals and Holidays is a musical revue exploring celebrations around the world. The songs are unison or easy two part suitable for classroom or choir, and staging is simple. Perform all 12 songs, or use just a few. Songs include

They’re Celebrating Next Door
Oshogatsu (Japan)
Carnival (Brazil)
The Festival of Lanterns (Korea)
Alleluia (Spain)
Oktoberfest/Kinderpolka (Germany)
St. Lucy Day (Croatia)
Happy Diwali (India)
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights
December 6 is a Holiday (Belgium)
Christmas in Greece is a Joyful Time
It’s Christmas Time in a Country Way (Nashville).

The book/CD includes performance/accompaniment tracks, piano/vocal score, reproducible script and vocals, and projectable PDF with audio links. The recording features excellent vocals and orchestrations.

Link to product: Festivals and Holidays

This collection is available as a book/CD AND as a download. For $30 - great value!

One of the extras we've included on the CD is a set of concert projectables. While your class sings the song, Festival of Lanterns, you can project pictures of what the Festival of Lanterns looks like - and you don't have to find the photos - it's all done for you and is included on the CD.

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Celebrate Around the World includes traditional and composed songs from many different cultures. You could use this as your winter concert, or you could teach the songs any time of year as part of a multicultural study.

A simple script for narrators is included if you’d like to perform this as a program. It’s easy to adapt the script to leave out songs, or substitute songs.

Most of the songs are two part, but all can be performed in unison with younger students. The recording features excellent vocals and orchestrations. A PDF file of the vocal parts to print and/or project is included on the disk. The teacher's guide includes the script and all the piano/vocal scores. This collection includes recordings of all the performance and accompaniment tracks.

There are 10 songs - The first is a show opener, and the last is a song to use as a finale for the show. The songs include: