Christmas songs for tuba

Last updated 30 October 2026

Ten well-known Christmas pieces for tuba, from easy carols to two hard pieces from The Nutcracker.

1. 1. Jingle Bells

   A song about a sleigh ride that, funnily enough, never mentions Christmas. In 1965 two astronauts played it as a prank on a harmonica and bells, one of the first songs broadcast from space.

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2. 2. Joy to the World

   The most-published Christmas hymn in North America. Isaac Watts wrote the words in 1719, based on Psalm 98. The tune was long credited to Handel, but scholars doubt it.

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3. 3. Deck the Halls

   It began as “Nos Galan”, a Welsh song for New Year’s Eve, which is why it sings of the old year going out.

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4. 4. Silent Night

   “Stille Nacht”, written in Austria and first sung on Christmas Eve 1818. It has been translated into about 300 languages, and at the Christmas truce of 1914 soldiers sang it across the trenches.

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5. 5. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

   An old English carol whose first line is often misread: the comma comes after “merry”. “God rest you merry” meant “God grant you peace and happiness”, so the song is wishing the gentlemen well.

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6. 6. What Child Is This

   The tune is Greensleeves, an English song from the 1500s that Shakespeare mentions in one of his plays. The Christmas words came much later, in 1865, from an insurance company manager.

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7. 7. O Come, All Ye Faithful

   Originally a Latin hymn, “Adeste Fideles”, from the 1740s. The oldest copy is signed by John Francis Wade, an English music copyist, who is usually credited with both the words and the tune.

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8. 8. O Holy Night

   “Cantique de Noël” in the original French, from 1847. A wine merchant wrote the poem, and Adolphe Adam, the composer of the ballet Giselle, set it to music.

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9. 9. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

   The last two pieces are a big jump in difficulty. This is the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo from The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s Christmas ballet. In the orchestra the tune is played on the celesta, a small keyboard that sounds like bells.

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10. 10. Nutcracker March

    The march that opens the Christmas party in The Nutcracker. Audiences heard it nine months before the ballet opened, in a concert suite Tchaikovsky made from the score.

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