Christmas songs on kalimba

A kalimba under the tree is one of the nicest first instruments, and these are the songs everybody wants to play on it in December. Each one is in numbers, with the English words under them, a video that plays it once, then slowly with the numbers falling onto the tines, then at tempo, and a PDF to print for the whole family.

They are sorted from the easiest. Jingle Bells comes first: its famous chorus stays on five tines around the middle. We Wish You a Merry Christmas, the old carol from the West Country of England, jumps a little more. Silent Night was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber in 1818 for a Christmas Eve in Oberndorf, Austria, to words by Joseph Mohr; it is slow and calm, so let each tine ring to the end of its dashes. Deck the Halls is a Welsh New Year's tune, Nos Galan, and the longest here, with its “fa la la la la” running up the short tines.

And for the night of 31 December, Auld Lang Syne, Robert Burns' song for the New Year. All these tunes are in the public domain, free to print and share. Tip: play the chorus of Jingle Bells first, then the verse, and sing along: the words give you the rhythm.