New version of the Huron Carol brings an Indigenous perspective – and looks to set the historical record straight | Canada Voices

Sarah Quartel remembers the moment the Christmas carol she’d grown up singing – and always adored – turned sour. It was 2017, and the Canadian composer and educator was running through her catalogue of compositions. When she came across her choral arrangement of the Huron Carol, written five years earlier, something didn’t sit right.

She’d enjoyed arranging the haunting carol, which places the story of the Nativity in an Indigenous setting, with Jesus born in a “lodge of broken bark,” hunters gathered around and “chiefs” taking the place of magi. But when she looked at the piece this time, she had a different reaction.

“I went ‘whoops,’” she said in an interview from her home in London, Ont. “I looked at the title of that piece and thought, do I know anything about it? The history of it, or where it’s come from?

“I had this flood of questions and a flood of discomfort.”

The carol’s lyrics, widely believed to have been written in 1642 by Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf, sounded uncomfortably colonial in the era of Truth and Reconciliation. Lines that urge the “sons of Manitou” to “kneel before the radiant boy,” who brings “beauty, peace and joy” denied the damaging legacy of Christian missionary work on Indigenous peoples.

Ms. Quartel started asking questions about the piece. What she discovered shatters the myth Canadians have told themselves for more than a century about the carol often referred to as Canada’s oldest Christmas song. It’s also led to the creation of a new version, with lyrics written by Wendat artist Andrée Levesque Sioui, that brings an Indigenous perspective to the carol – and sets the historical record straight.

This holiday season, more than 50 choirs across North America are planning to sing the new version, called Iesous Ahatonnia’, – including the choir I sing with, Voca Chorus of Toronto.

Director Jenny Crober says she’s thrilled to have the work back in her seasonal repertoire, after having dropped it over the past decade. “It’s a gorgeous piece, but when I looked at the words a while ago, I just thought, ‘No, I don’t think so.’”

Back in 2017, Ms. Quartel wasn’t sure what to do about the Huron Carol. While she had concerns about the lyrics, she loved the melody, which has been recorded by a wide range of artists, including Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennitt, the Crash Test Dummies and Indigenous actor and singer Tom Jackson. So she reached out to Jeanette Gallant, a B.C.-based musician and ethnomusicologist who’d researched the carol and raised doubts about its origin story.

“It had always bothered me,” says Dr. Gallant. The Brébeuf story sounded fantastical to her, and there seemed to be little evidence to back it up, though it’s still widely cited by educators and music resources around the world.

Brébeuf supposedly wrote the Huron Carol for the Wendat people (known then by the French term Huron) as a way to help them understand the Nativity. The Wendat embraced it, the story goes – and generations of Canadians embraced it, too. It has inspired picture books, holiday cards and even a national series of postage stamps in 1977.

But Dr. Gallant’s research suggests the beloved holiday favourite has a murkier, more convoluted history than most have traditionally believed.

If Brébeuf, who lived in Sainte-Marie among the Hurons (a Jesuit settlement in southern Ontario), did write the song, there’s no direct mention of it in historical records. The only evidence is a 1688 account of his successor, Father Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, administering the last rites to a dying Wendat girl, who sang Jesus Is Going to be Born, a tune thought to be performed by the Wendat around Christmas time. Chaumonot may have been referring to Iesous Ahatonnia’, a song in the Wendat language believed to have been written by Brébeuf. (Translated, Iesous ahatonnia’ means “Jesus, he is newly made, just born.”)

Brébeuf, who was fluent in Wendat, may have written that original version. But Dr. Gallant says that’s not the song that English Canadians have delighted in singing over the past century.

The man responsible for that version, with its familiar “Twas in the moon of wintertime” opening, was a Canadian poet named Jesse Edgar Middleton.

Mr. Middleton’s English lyrics, written in 1927, are often cited as a translation of the Wendat song. But in fact, he wrote completely new lyrics. While both works speak to the birth of Jesus, Mr. Middleton’s words bear no resemblance to the original.

He made a few mistakes along the way: His “mighty Gitchi-manitou” is an Algonquin term, not Wendat, and Wendat people didn’t consider themselves the “sons of Manitou.”

But his words were poetic and captured Canadians’ collective imagination. They celebrated the idea of the “Vanishing Indian,” Dr. Gallant says, a derogatory 19th-century literary trope depicting Indigenous peoples as defeated.

As for the tune, it has likely evolved too, she says, though the origin is unclear. While it’s often described as based on the French folk song Une Jeune Pucelle, there are few similarities beyond the carol’s distinctive first four notes.

Complicating things further, a little-known French version also exists, with different, though equally derogatory, lyrics.

But an influential 1899 book by historian Ernest Myrand helped convince Canadians the piece hadn’t changed since the 17th century. Myrand called it “Canada’s first Christmas carol,” and the description persisted, even after Middleton rewrote the lyrics.

The Wendats’ experience with colonization was brutal, says Dr. Gallant. The arrival of the missionaries brought war and diseases that reduced their population from more than 20,000 in 1600 to a few thousand by the 1940s. And despite the carol’s depiction of hunters and chiefs kneeling gratefully by the Christ child, the Wendat were famously resistant to conversion, she notes.

But part of her couldn’t help hoping the memorable tune wouldn’t die. Maybe what it needed were new lyrics that recognized the truth of the Wendat experience. So when Ms. Quartel contacted her to discuss the piece, they talked about the possibility of finding someone to write a new version.

When they reached out to Ms. Sioui, the Wendat singer-songwriter wasn’t sure the project was worth it. She had no idea how popular the Huron Carol had become, not just in Canada, but in the United States and Britain, too. When she learned more about it, she had other concerns. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch it,” she says. “This song was meant to be a conversion song.”

She canvassed Wendat people in the community of Wendake, Que., where she teaches the native language, and got a mixed reaction to the idea of writing a new version. Some embraced it. Others said don’t do it, either because they were dedicated Christians and liked the carol’s message or because they weren’t and wanted the work to “just to go away,” Ms. Sioui says.

In the end, she decided the carol needed a Wendat voice and began working with Ms. Quartel and Dr. Gallant on new lyrics. The women spent three years on the project, meeting via Zoom to talk through Ms. Sioui’s ideas. She wanted the work to feature all three languages – Wendat, English and French – and to follow the arc of Wendat history. The version she came up with begins with the Wendat Creation story, describes the Jesuits’ arrival and the war and disease that followed and ends with a call for “a world of peace, where differences can shape our unity.”

The work was officially unveiled at Podium, a choral symposium held in Montreal, where the women finally met in person. In a presentation about the project, they explained why they’d decided to rewrite the carol. Then the roomful of 50 or so singers and musical directors picked up the score and sang Iesous Ahantonnia’. By the end, a number of people in the room were in tears, says Dr. Gallant.

Ms. Sioui says she was “crying like a baby. It was as if we were finally being heard.”

She recognizes that some Wendat people may not feel as enthusiastic about the project. Though some in Wendake still sing the original Wendat version, others would be happy to see the carol disappear. But to her, the new version represents an opportunity to acknowledge Wendat history.

As for Ms. Crober of Voca Chorus, she can’t wait for her choir to perform the piece this weekend in their holiday concert. “I went up to them after the presentation and said, ‘Guess what we’re singing this December?’ I’m just so delighted to have it back.”

Voca Chrous will perform Iesous Ahantonnia’ at their holiday concert this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Toronto’s Eastminster United Church, 310 Danforth Ave.