At any given hour on a December day in Brazil, a radio station is playing Simone’s 1995 version of “Então É Natal,” a local version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” The cover has become so ubiquitous that in 1999, one newspaper columnist suggested that people fled the country at the end of the year to escape its incessant performance.
Brazil’s obsession with translated Christmas songs extends to church music, where most Christians sing and Christian radio stations play Portuguese versions of old European carols, like “Cantai que o Salvador Chegou” (“Joy to the World”) and “Oh Vinde Adoremos” (“O Come, All Ye Faithful).”
It’s not that Brazilian Christmas songs don’t exist: There are standards from the past, such as “Boas Festas” (“Happy Holidays”) by Assis Valente, released in 1933; Otávio Babo Filho’s “O Velhinho” (“The Old Man”), popularized by Carlos Galhardo in 1957; and the carnival-style “Meninos da Mangueira” (“Boys from Mangueira,” a reference to one of the most known samba groups of Rio de Janeiro) by Ataulfo Alves Júnior (1976). But all are songs about Santa Claus.
Meanwhile, Christian Christmas songs, even Roman Catholic ones, are lacking. Among the Catholics, most celebrations are modest. Local traditions like Missa do Gallo (Midnight Mass) don’t have specific local musical traditions, and church leaders often lend their buildings for public Christmas programs unrelated to church programs.
Meanwhile, Brazilian gospel music has exploded in popularity. According to Spotify, the genre’s listenership grew on average 44 percent each year between 2015 and 2020. This year, from January to March alone, the number of gospel music listeners on Spotify grew an additional 46 percent. In another platform, Deezer, two of the most streamed songs in the country in 2024 were Christian.
So why has a country known for its vibrant music scene, robust recording industry, and a growing evangelical population been slow to produce original Christmas music?
Part of it may be a consequence of the Judaizing theological movement that gained traction in the 1990s, happening simultaneously as the Brazilian evangelical population began to explode, said Renato Marinoni, founder of the Institute of Worship, Culture, and Art.
In addition to advocating for the observance of Jewish festivals, this movement began to argue that the Bible doesn’t command the celebration of Jesus’ birth and that the date of Christmas was borrowed from pre-Christian pagan rituals. As this ideology spread, many churches began downsizing their own Christmas celebrations.
“During my childhood, the church I attended in Poços de Caldas always put up a large Christmas tree in the building, but over time this tradition disappeared,” said Marinoni.
The lack of original holiday music sets Brazil apart from its Latin American neighbors. In Hispanic America, as in the United States, Christian musicians regularly release Christmas albums. Artists such as Marcos Witt (an American, son of missionaries who lived in Mexico) and Mexico’s Jesús Adrián Romero have regularly composed and released Christmas music for years. Some of them, such as Witt’s “Emanuel, Dios con Nosotros Es” are sung by Spanish-speaking congregations in seasonal services.
The same phenomenon is not seen in Brazil. “In the last decade, Brazilian evangelicals have produced lots of original worship music, but this type of repertoire [linked to Christian festivities] has not been something artists have as a priority [as it is in other countries],” said Marcell Steuernagel, the director of Southern Methodist University’s master of sacred music program, who grew up in Curitiba, Brazil.
Compared to other parts of the world (and compared to those countries’ holidays), Brazilian Christians celebrate the festival in a more introspective, familiar way, said Fabiane Behling Luckow, an art history professor at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas.
Many Christmas practices, including the singing of Christian Christmas carols, came as a result of immigration. Protestant migrants and missionaries who arrived in Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries brought their denominations’ hymnals and translated them, Luckow said.
Beyond their theological significance, celebrations such as Christmas connected newcomers to a distant motherland and family members across generations.
“This time of the year makes me very happy because I know that I’ll finally sing hymnal songs that remind me of my childhood and my grandmother,” said Luckow, whose family immigrated to Brazil from Germany.
Steuernagel agrees that Christmastime is marked by the celebration of traditions. “During the ‘ordinary time’ of the liturgical year, people turn to new music, to new releases,” he said. “During Christmas, as at Easter, people seek a return to the old and traditional.”
The Return of the Hymnal
Traditional arrangements of Christmas carols are structurally and stylistically different from popular new worship songs, which tend to “have few chords and rely heavily on repetition,” said Anuacy Fontes, president of the Council of Music of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil. “It works very well for congregational singing, but it’s not what churches need at Christmas.”
The association of Christmas music with classical music, choirs, and orchestras may actually “discourage those whose work stems from a more popular context from exploring this area,” said Jorge Camargo, a Christian singer and composer. For instance, worship leaders may feel that Brazilian genres like Música Popular Brasileira, which incorporates samba’s guitar and drum, create “too simple” of a sound for the holiday.
Camargo, who has been active in the Christian music industry since 1980, issued a Christmas-themed album—Natal, Piano e Voz, in 2021. Only 2 of the album’s 11 songs were original.
The Christmas album, he said, is not among his most-played on digital platforms, even during the holiday season. “The upside is that I can promote it every year as if it were something new, because most people are unfamiliar with these recordings.”
The desire to add complexity and grandeur to Christmas celebrations has led many Brazilian churches to rely on cantatas (accompanied choral pieces that may have multiple movements, carols, or selections from larger works, like Handel’s Messiah), almost always translated from English and German, Marinoni said.
Almost all evangelical churches, even when they are small, have their own choirs. In general, Christmas services are special programs, with a brief preaching and more music than usual. Some congregations enact Nativity scenes. Most of these services happen before the week of Christmas—services closer to the holidays are often empty because many families travel to spend Christmas with their families in other cities.
Despite this national preference for old music, choirs, and orchestras, some dissenting voices have been raised. Defying the trend, some Christian musicians are dedicated to creating new Christmas songs with a focus on congregational singing. Purples, a band based in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo, has released a Christmas song every year since 2022.
“The Incarnation of Jesus, the one who made himself nothing as mentioned in Philippians 2:7, has always deeply moved me,” said Júlio Filho, Purples’ vocalist and songwriter.
“In 2022, when my son Cristiano was born, was when I realized how defenseless and vulnerable a baby is. That event made me come to a better understanding of the state of humiliation our Lord endured when he came into the world in such a profoundly human way.”
This was how “Emanuel,” Purples’ first Christmas song, came to life, which Júlio wrote for his small church to sing—and then was pleasantly surprised when he learned that other churches had incorporated the song into their services. The chorus says, “Christmas, our hope is born / Earth and heavens, bow to baby Jesus.”
The following year brought “Isaías 9,” whose lyrics are based on Isaiah 9:2, 6. With a simpler arrangement than “Emanuel,” the song was written to be accessible for worship leaders to teach their band and congregation. The band’s most recent track, “Glória,” released on November 25, includes vocals from a local church children’s choir and a portion that brings back Julio’s reflections on the Incarnation: “He became one of us. / He emptied himself. / By grace he delivered favor to his own.”
“Brazilian Christians are often concerned about anything that feels overly commercial, and this is also a concern shared by musicians,” Filho said. “But we need to be more intentional about celebrating occasions like Christmas and Easter so we are not flooded by tunes like Simone’s ‘Então É Natal.’”
