Honestly, the greatest achievement of “Carol of the Bells” is making the lyric “ding dong, ding dong” sound badass.
@jajarra replied:
It’s a weirdly ominous song for being about holiday cheer.
That’s partly because it originally wasn’t. The melody is taken from a Ukrainian New Year’s carol; the English lyrics are unrelated to the Ukrainian ones (which have nothing to do with bells).
Here, have a very extra performance of the original:
google translate has trouble with Ukrainian apparently
but it seems like a standard ‘let you have prosperity and/or a good harvest in the new year’ type of song, which doesn’t explain why the melody is more evocative of the great old ones rising from the sea to destroy everything you hold dear
bee-squared-official
