Christmas Carol Chords
The carols everyone knows, charted for players. Open any song for its chords over lyrics, fretboard diagrams, key, tempo, and source attribution. All strictly public-domain — learn them on guitar, or play the same chords on ukulele, mandolin, or any chording instrument.
Most classic carols need only three or four open chords — Silent Night moves between G, D7, and C the whole way through.
Christmas carols with chords
Songs of the season
A carol began as a communal song for seasonal festivals, and the word may come from a term for a circle dance. Not every favorite here started that way. Joy to the World is Isaac Watts's version of Psalm 98, published in 1719; Lowell Mason first set it to its present tune in 1836, crediting the tune to Handel. Jingle Bells was published in 1857 as The One Horse Open Sleigh and had no original connection to Christmas. Deck the Halls sets Thomas Oliphant's English words of the 1860s to a Welsh New Year's Eve tune.
Silent Night has the best guitar story in the collection. In 1818 Joseph Mohr asked Franz Gruber for a melody with a guitar accompaniment for the Christmas Eve service at Oberndorf in Austria, and it was first performed there that night. Gruber's original was a moderato in 6/8 with a siciliana rhythm, and the version commonly sung today is a slower lullaby. Here it needs only G, D7 and C.
Joy to the World takes G, C and D7, and Jingle Bells adds A7. O Come All Ye Faithful uses both D and D7, Deck the Halls goes on to Em and Am, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas is the busiest, with seven chords including B7. Count Silent Night in two slow beats to the bar, matching its 6/8 lilt; the faster carols want a steady down-up strum.
Why these songs are free to play
Every entry is strictly public-domain or traditional, source-attributed, and charted as chords — so you can learn, play, and share without any copyright worry.