Songs   
In the Bleak Midwinter
(tune: 1906, words: circa 1872)

In the Bleak Midwinter is a Christmas carol based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem. It was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904.

The poem became a Christmas carol after it appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a setting by Gustav Holst. Holst's setting, "Cranham", is a hymn tune setting suitable for congregational singing, since the poem is irregular in meter and any setting of it requires a skilful and adaptable tune. The hymn is titled after Cranham, Gloucestershire. 		While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
(tune: various, words: circa 1700)

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks is a Christmas carol describing the Annunciation to the Shepherds, with words attributed to Irish hymnist, lyricist and England's Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate.

The exact date of Tate's composition is not known, but the words appeared in Tate and Nicholas Brady's 1700 supplement to their New Version of the Psalms of David of 1696. It was the only Christmas hymn authorized to be sung by the Anglican Church; before 1700 only the Psalms of David were permitted to be sung. It is written in common meter and based on the Gospel of Luke 2:8-14.

It is the only one of the sixteen works in the 1700 supplement to still be sung today. The carol is most commonly sung to two different tunes: "Winchester Old" in the United Kingdom and a variation on a Handel aria arranged by Lowell Mason in the United States.