I have a section in my ukulele music binder just for Christmas tunes. Over the years I’ve amassed a pretty good collection of relatively easy tunes that I can play every year around Christmas time. They make great background entertainment for any Christmas party, or just to play on your own to get into the spirit of the holiday.
Al Wood from Ukulele Hunt totally owns this genre. In fact, I’ve only got three different arrangers included here, but the coverage among these three is very complete.
Ukulele Hunt’s Christmas Trilogy
Al Wood’s collection almost has it all. This is the mother lode and makes up the first few dozen pages of my Christmas section. Al is a Brit and so some of these songs may not be familiar to Americans, but there’s plenty of familiar tunes. Best of all, these are arranged to be easy enough that a moderately experienced fingerstyle player can play them through with very little learning curve. I bought these e-books one by one as they came out, but now Al offers them all together – 32 songs in total for just $14. Buy the Christmas Trilogy.
Here’s the full list of tunes you get:
Christmas Ukulele
- Auld Lang Syne
- Deck the Halls
- God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
- Good King Wenceslas: Two versions one rocky and one traditional
- Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
- Here We Come A-Wassailing
- In the Bleak Midwinter
- Silent Night
- Sussex Carol
- The Holly and the Ivy
- Twelve Days of Christmas
Christmas Ukulele 2:
- Go Tell It On the Mountain
- I Saw Three Ships
- Il est ne, le divin Enfant
- In Dulci Jubilo
- Joy to the World
- O Come All Ye Faithful
- Once in Royal David’s City
- The First Noel
- We Three Kings
- While Shepherds Watch their Flocks
- We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Christmas Ukulele 3:
- Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over?
- Ding Dong Merrily on High?
- Down in Yon Forest
- Hanukkah O Hanukkah
- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
- It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
- O Holy Night
- O Little Town of Bethlehem
- Pat-A-Pan
- What Child Is This?
Carol of the Bells
One of my favorite Christmas tunes, and the song that was played after my wife and I tied the knot at our wedding. I’m not sure why this isn’t included in the Christmas Trilogy, but here’s a nice and simple arrangement of Carol of the Bells from Ukulele Hunt.
If you’re a more advanced player, the version of Carol of the Bells as played by John King is really amazing. This is available, once again, at Ukulele Hunt.
Even More Christmas fingerstyle arrangements from Ukulele Hunt that are not included in the Trilogy E-book (probably for copyright reasons):
- Christmas Time Is Here (Vince Guaraldi) – This is the dreamy tune the kids sing in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
- (I’m Dreaming of a) White Christmas
- Winter Wonderland (new in 2015!)
Roger Ruthen’s Ukiversal/TriTab Christmas Tabs
Another prolific fingerstyle arranger, Roger Ruthen of PDF Minstrel has done a bunch of arrangements. If you’re too lazy to click the link above, here’s the full list (as of this posting):
- Angels We Have Heard On High
- Deck The Halls
- El Noi De La Mare
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
- I Saw Three Ships
- In The Bleak Mid Winter
- Joy To The World
- O Come All Ye Faithful
- Ode To Joy
- Once In Royal David’s City
- Silent Night
- The First Noel
- We Three Kings
- We Wish You A Merry Christmas
- What Child Is This
Fingerstyle Christmas Books for Ukulele
If you don’t feel like downloading and printing lots of PDFs, check out these book collections. Some of these arrangements are really nice and make a convenient take-along to your holiday parties.
- Ukulele Christmas Songs (Kevs Quickstart)
- Easy Holiday Songs for Solo Ukulele (Volume 1)
- Jumpin’ Jim’s Ukulele Christmas: Ukulele Solo (not all fingerstyle arrangements)
If you know of any fingerstyle Christmas arrangements for the ukulele that aren’t listed here, please let me know in the comments section.