Friday, November 28, 2014

Villancicos de Navidad

Thanksgiving 2014 has passed so it is now officially Christmas season!  One of the best things about Christmas, if you ask me, is the music.  I have bought quite a few Spanish Christmas songs over at iTunes so that I can play them in class during the last two weeks of the quarter. 

José Feliciano's Feliz Navidad continues to regale us year after year, and I suspect that the simplicity of the lyrics is partially responsible for its success.  Most everyone can belt out "feliz Navidad" over and over again, even if they get lost on the "prospero año" part of the song and try to fake their way through it.  I do make sure that all of my students know the line so they can seem knowledgeable when friends come at them with, "Hey, you take Spanish.  What are they saying in this song?"



 I put together some lyric sheets for the three Spanish Christmas Carols that I find are the easiest for my students to sing - Cascabel, Mi Burrito Sabanero, and Los Peces en el Río.  (I'm not sure the Christmas meaning of that last one, but it seems to be a Christmas carol by all accounts - even though I'm not seeing the connection.  There is a mention of the Virgin Mary washing diapers, so I guess that is vaguely related to Christmas . . . .)

If you would like to download a copy of the lyrics for these Christmas carols in Spanish, with festive decorations, please click here or on the image below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ord8q8t94sdcvqs/Spanish%20Christmas%20Carols.pdf?dl=0

And you might be asking yourself why I did not include the ever-present Feliz Navidad in the set, and the answer to that would be one word: copyright.  José Feliciano and his record label are not feeling especially friendly about sharing so, despite the fact that this blog is not widely read and is non-commercial, I'm going to play by the rules and respect the copyright.  If you wish to share the lyrics with your students in a strictly educational way, you can find them online with little effort.

Happy start to the Christmas season, amigos.  Away we go toward merriment and joy!

Hasta pronto,

--AnneK


2 comments :

ProfeSpain8 said...

Nice! My students love Rudolph, Deck the Halls, and the 12 days of Christmas in Spanish. I will definitely use these too, though! Thanks for sharing.

AnneK said...

If I get some free time this weekend, I might add Deck the Halls and the Twelve Days of Christmas too. Rudolph is also still under copyright, I'm sure, since it was released just a few decades ago. Thank you very much for stopping by my blog and for your comment. I'm always delighted to see that someone is reading and appreciating. <3 --AnneK

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