The backstories to your favourite Christmas carols

It turns out the Christmas songs we know and love today had some strange beginnings

Some Christmas tunes were inspired by street races, another was a competitive drinking song, and yet another was made famous by its wartime rendition.

Jingle Bells: written by a jerk

Here's the truth about Jingle Bells. It was written by a 'jerk'.

The real story of Jingle Bells starts on the banks of the Mystic River in New England, just upstream from Boston, in Medford, Mass.

Historians believe annual sleigh races in Medford, Mass. in the 1800s inspired James Lord Pierpont to write the song. But, he wasn't a nice guy, apparently.

"He's kind of a jerk, actually. He would leave all of the time. He went out west to try to make his way with the gold rush. He went all over the place and left his wife with his father," said Kyna Hamill, professor of literature at Boston University and vice-president of the Medford Historical Society.

And the song was originally song about drunk people, sung by drunk people, he said.

"If you think about the fact that one of the great industries of Medford was rum-making, and if you really think about the lyrics of the song, with the lens that these are drag races that are happening at top speed down the centre of this street, one of the suggestions is that it's actually a drinking song," she said.

Conspiracy theories about how Jingle Bells became a Christmas song originate in Savannah, Ga., where residents believe the people of Medford are stealing their song.

The theory stems from the fact that when Pierpont's first wife died, he moved to Savannah and became pastor at the church.

During a Thanksgiving service, he led the congregation in a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells. They loved it, and he performed it again a month later at Christmas.

Thus, Jingle Bells became a Christmas song.

Some 115 years after it was written in a pub in Medford, Jingle Bells became the first song ever broadcast to earth from space, during a Gemini mission in 1965.

Deck the Halls: a drinking game

For Welsh revellers bringing in the New Year in the 1700s, Deck the Halls was more than a song. It was a competition.

The popular Christmas carol originally comes from a Welsh folk song called Nos Galan, which meant New Year's Eve in 18th century Welsh.Traditionally, people would drink and make merry, while competing in turns to see who could sing the most four line verses to a particular tune, said Wyn James, lecturer in Modern Welsh Literature at Cardiff University and a member of the International Ballad Commission

The competitor would sing one line of the verse, then an instrument — or their friends — would repeat the melody.

"What happens when you don't have the instrumental element? You get people joining in...They sing ,'Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.'"

But how did we get from a competitive Welsh drinking song to a cheery English Christmas carol?

That story begins with a harpist known as Blind John Parry, who dictated a transcription of the music to Nos Galan in 1740.

Around 100 years later, another harpist, coincidentally also named John Parry, published the lyrics, both Welsh and English, in an edited volume of Welsh airs.

While the English version, titled Deck The Halls, was all about Christmas, the Welsh lyrics stayed true to its roots as a drinking song.

But there are still hints of the original Welsh drinking song in the fourth verse of Deck The Halls, which calls on revellers to "Follow me in merry measure."

One final thought. How do say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in Welsh? Try: Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Silent Night: the wartime miracle

The power of Silent Night was never so clear as on Christmas Eve 1914, when fighting on the battlefields of the First World War stopped — and a lone soldier's exquisite voice made history.

"It was impromptu, no one planned it," Stanley Weintraub, the author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, told Daybreak South's Chris Walker.

"It has to begin with something, and it did begin with elements of shared culture. If it hadn't been for shared culture, certainly there would have been no Christmas truce."

Weintraub said it started with German officer, Walter Kirchhoff, a tenor with the Berlin Opera.

"He came forward and sang Silent Night in German, and then in English. In the clear, cold night of Christmas Eve, his voice carried very far.

"The shooting had stopped and in that silence he sang and the British knew the song and sang back."

Gradually the troops crawled forward into No Man's Land, said Weintraub.

The song had a deep impact on many of the soldiers.

"Soldiers … wrote home the day after to their families, to their wives, and to their parents, saying, 'You won't believe this. It was like a waking dream.'"

"They recognized that on both ends of the rifle, they were the same."

Silent Night was granted UNESCO cultural heritage status in 2011.

To listen to the full audio, click the links labelled: Jingle Bells: drag racing, drunk driving, a deadbeat dad; Drinking song, Deck the Halls, gets Christmas treatment; One of the stories of Silent Night.