Editing Christmas music (section)

===Alms===
[[File:Nicolae Ionescu - Children carolers in Bucharest, 1929.jpg|thumb|right|Child Christmas carolers in Bucharest, Romania 1929]]
The tradition of singing Christmas carols in return for [[alms]] or charity began in England in the seventeenth century after the [[English Restoration|Restoration]]. Town musicians or 'waits' were licensed to collect money in the streets in the weeks preceding Christmas, the custom spread throughout the population by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up to the present day. Also from the seventeenth century, there was the English custom, predominantly involving women, of taking a [[wassail]] bowl to their neighbors to solicit gifts, accompanied by carols. Despite this long history, many Christmas carols date only from the nineteenth century onwards, with the exception of songs such as the "[[Wexford Carol]]", "[[God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen]]", "As I Sat on a Sunny Bank", "[[The Holly and the Ivy]]",<ref name="Oxford">{{Cite book |last1=Simpson |first1=Jacqueline |title=Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore |last2=Roud |first2=Steve |publisher=Oxford |year=2000 |page=64}}</ref> the "[[Coventry Carol]]" and "[[I Saw Three Ships]]". The practice of ordinary Christian church members of various denominations going door to door and singing carols continues in many parts of the world, such as in India; residents give money to the carolers, which churches distribute to the poor.<ref name="Carvalho2016">{{cite web |last1=Carvalho |first1=Nirmala |title=Christians beaten while caroling in western India |url=https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/12/christians-beaten-caroling-western-india |publisher=[[Crux (online newspaper)|Crux]] |access-date=January 1, 2023 |language=en |date=December 18, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Registrar |first1=India Office of the |title=Census of India, 1961 |date=1962 |publisher=[[Government of India]] |page=62 |language=en |quote=These carol singers collect voluntary contributions which are mostly utilised for charitable purposes. 25th, Christians without any exception attend the church, clad in new clothes . ... Alms are distributed to the poor.}}</ref>