"Good King Wenceslas" by York Minster Choir

My last post pointed to the tragic side of Christmas: Herod's massacre of the innocents. This is a carol that by contrast commemorates the kind deeds of a good king, actually a  Bohemian nobleman posthumously raised to kingship by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto and canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wenceslas lived in what is now part of the Czech Republic, the lyrics of the carol were written in mid nineteenth century England and set to a Finnish tune.