Who wrote the first American Christmas carol?

The first American Christmas carol is generally credited to John de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit missionary who wrote “Jesous Ahatonhia,” better known as the Huron Carol, around 1642.

Brébeuf composed the lyrics in the Wendat (Huron) language while serving among the Wendat people in Huronia, in what is now Ontario, Canada. He adapted the melody from a sixteenth-century French folk song and reshaped the Nativity story for a local cultural setting.

The English version most listeners know, “’Twas in the Moon of Wintertime,” is not Brébeuf’s original wording. Those lyrics were written by Jesse Edgar Middleton in 1926. The carol is therefore often called Canada’s first Christmas song or the first North American Christmas carol, rather than the first carol of the United States specifically. Brébeuf was later killed in 1649 and canonized as one of the Canadian Martyrs.