These easy Christmas piano songs are traditional carols and songs in the public domain, arranged for the right hand. Each one opens on its own page with free sheet music: the melody on a treble staff with the letter name printed under every note. You can switch to plain letter notes or to the computer keys that play each note, press Listen to hear the song, or press Practice and let the keyboard wait for each key.
Which Christmas song to learn first
The songs above are sorted from the easiest to the hardest. A few good starting points:
- Jingle Bells. The chorus fits under five fingers in the C position, C D E F G, so your hand never has to move. The only challenge is keeping the repeated notes even.
- Silent Night. A slow carol in 3/4 time with a gentle long-short rhythm. It reaches higher than most easy songs, which makes it a good next step.
- We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Deck the Halls are quick and cheerful. Both repeat their phrases often, so once you know the first line you know much of the song.
The longer carols, such as O Holy Night, move over a wider range and are marked intermediate. Leave them for when the easier songs feel comfortable.
Playing carols with the sheet music
Carols are a good way to start reading music, because most people already know how they should sound. Read the sheet music first and use the letter under each note to check yourself. If a rhythm looks unfamiliar, press Listen and follow the highlighted notes as the song plays. Each page also explains how to count its rhythm, which fingers to use and where the tricky jumps are.
Many carols begin with a pickup, a note or two before the first full bar, like the "We" of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The sheet music shows the pickup as a short first bar, and the song pages point out where each one comes.
Print the sheet music for the holidays
Every song page has a Print sheet music button that prints just the staff, and a printable image of the whole arrangement further down the page. Print a few carols for a family sing-along, or for a young player to practice from away from the screen. The arrangements are simple melodies, so they also work on other instruments that read the treble clef, such as a recorder or a keyboard glockenspiel, within their range.
Old songs, free to play
Every song on this page is in the public domain, because the music was written long ago. Silent Night was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber in 1818 in Oberndorf, Austria. Jingle Bells was published by James Lord Pierpont in 1857, under the title One Horse Open Sleigh, and its words never mention Christmas. O Holy Night is by Adolphe Adam, who set it in 1847 in France, and Joy to the World sets Isaac Watts's words of 1719 to a tune first printed by Lowell Mason in 1836. Each song page tells the story of its carol in more detail.
Make it a game
The falling notes game plays any of these songs as a game: notes fall toward the keys and you press each one as it arrives. Turn on Wait for me to learn a carol at your own pace, then turn it off and try to play it in time for a score.
More songs
When the Christmas songs feel easy, the full list of easy piano songs has nursery rhymes, hymns and classical themes at every level. New to the piano? Start with hand position and finger numbers and your first song.