What’s Your Favorite Christmas Carol? You May Be Singing It Incorrectly, Experts Say 

One of the best parts of the Christmas season is the songs, with everyone enjoying a little Jingle Bell Rock and having a Holly Jolly Christmas with the help of some great tunes.

But if your favorite Yuletide carols are the true classics, you (and everyone else) may have been singing them wrong this entire time.

Medieval Christmas carols, such as While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night, were never given formal melodies, according to Dr. Michael Carter, the senior properties historian at English Heritage.

Carter led a study into the history of Christmas hymns and discovered that most of what we consider standard tunes were developed in the 19th century.

"Only a fraction of medieval Christmas carols retain their original score, and it's entirely possible that in many instances these were never composed at all," Carter explained to the Guardian. "Instead, many tunes were simply made up on the spot."

Interestingly, while songs like this are often seen as "solemn," Carter says that these old carols "were actually written to be danced to" and may have had much happier melodies.

Of course, none of this means that these classics should be tossed from the Christmas canon, with Carter noting that it's "worth remembering that carols are a living tradition, evolving through the centuries, and should be celebrated in all forms, especially at Christmas."