Press
We all know our favorite holiday songs. But do you know where they came from?
I was six when I fell in love with Christmas carols, especially American Christmas songs. That year, the nuns in the Philadelphia orphanage where I lived took me to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The crowded chapel, the altar crèche, the scent of balsam trees—intoxicating!… Read more.
Guideposts
by Author Ron Clancy
Ron Clancy loves Christmas and most of all Christmas music, especially the fine old carols that have been passed down from generation to generation. You could call him a modern-day Scrooge, who after seeing the light, “holds Christmas in his heart and tries to keep it all the year.” Except in this case, Ron was not an old man when he received his epiphany… Read more.
PhillyCatholic.com
by Lou Baldwin
Seasonal music intrigued Ronald Clancy so much, it provided the impetus to begin a collection.
Though it was more than a half-century ago, Ronald Clancy remembers one Christmas Eve as if it were yesterday – being put to bed soon after dinner by the nuns and then being awakened hours later to go to midnight mass. “The entire orphanage went,” he says. “There was a big crèche on the altar. Balsam trees – the scent was fantastic”… Read more.
Christian Science Monitor
By John Grossmann
An intrepid researcher tracks down the stories behind America’s best-loved Christmas carols.
Armed with a notebook, a camera, a video camera, and an insatiable hunger to learn even more about some of America’s most beloved Christmas carols, Ronald Clancy set out in October 2008 to visit their widely scattered places of origin… Read more.
Christian Science Monitor
By John Grossmann