At first glance, this concert’s selections may seem like a mosaic of holiday favorites drawn from different eras, countries, and musical traditions. But taken together, they trace a surprisingly interconnected story about how composers have used Christmas—its imagery, myths, and spirit—as a lens through which to explore national identity, folklore, and even political history.

We open with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Christmas Overture, drawn from incidental music he wrote in 1909 for the play The Forest of Wild Thyme. Coleridge-Taylor—celebrated in his day as the “African Mahler”—built the overture around familiar carols like “Good ...

At first glance, this concert’s selections may seem like a mosaic of holiday favorites drawn from different eras, countries, and musical traditions. But taken together, they trace a surprisingly interconnected story about how composers have used Christmas—its imagery, myths, and spirit—as a lens through which to explore national identity, folklore, and even political history.

We open with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Christmas Overture, drawn from incidental music he wrote in 1909 for the play The Forest of Wild Thyme. Coleridge-Taylor—celebrated in his day as the “African Mahler”—built the overture around familiar carols like “Good King Wenceslas,” repurposing them for the concert stage. His interest in cultural identity and folk material places him in a lineage shared with Vaughan Williams and even Prokofiev, who similarly reimagined traditional tunes through modern orchestration.

The international thread continues with Alan Hovhaness’s Symphony No. 49 “Christmas.” Written in 1978 for the Seattle Symphony, it reflects Hovhaness’s blend of Armenian heritage, early music, and non-Western sacred traditions. Instead of festive holiday scenes, he offers a meditative, mystical atmosphere—closer to ancient ritual than celebration, and subtly aligned with the contemplative quality found later in Vaughan Williams’s Greensleeves fantasia.

From this spiritual quiet, we shift to the brisk winter imagery of Prokofiev’s “Troika” from Lieutenant Kijé. Though now a Christmas staple, its holiday identity wasn’t intentional. The film has nothing to do with the season; the association grew from its sleigh-bell rhythms and its mid-20th-century adoption in Christmas recordings. That cheerful surface masks the score’s original satirical edge, aimed at Soviet bureaucracy—another reminder of how context can transform a piece’s cultural meaning.

Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves provides a contrasting form of musical reinvention. The melody, likely from the late 1500s and long (incorrectly) attributed to Henry VIII, was adapted by the composer for his opera Sir John in Love. Its link to Christmas arises through the carol “What Child Is This?” illustrating how a tune can shift between secular, historical, and sacred worlds across centuries.

In Tchaikovsky’s “December: Christmas” from The Seasons, we see holiday imagery shaped by 19th-century Russian salon culture. Commissioned for a monthly magazine, The Seasons began as a practical assignment rather than a deeply personal project, yet “December” hints at the wintry charm and dance impulses that Tchaikovsky later expanded in The Nutcracker.

The evolving nature of holiday music continues with Kurt Heineke’s arrangement of the Ukrainian Bell Carol. The tune, originally Shchedryk, was composed in 1916 by Mykola Leontovych and based on an ancient New Year’s chant predicting a bountiful spring. Only after English lyrics transformed it into “Carol of the Bells” did it become intertwined with Christmas—a path similar to the transformations seen in Greensleeves and Troika.

The program culminates with selections from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, now inseparable from the season despite its mixed reception in 1892. Its rise to Christmas prominence came mostly through Tchaikovsky’s Suite, which captured audiences long before full productions became seasonal traditions in the United States. Tonight’s excerpts—Mother Ginger, the Chinese and Russian dances, and the Waltz of the Flowers—show how Tchaikovsky blended global imagery, fantasy, and festive color into the most enduring holiday ballet of all.