It was William Cummings who, in 1855, ignored both their suggestions, put Wesley’s text with Mendelssohn’s music, and created one of the most joyful and beloved Christmas hymns.

Isaac Watts’s 1719 paraphrase of Psalm 98 became a Christmas ... set to music by Lowell Mason—the “father of American hymnody”—and it is now one of the most popular Christmas hymns ...