The Diocese of Kerry has drawn up guidelines for "suitable" Christmas carols in its churches, which would exclude popular favourites such as Frosty The Snowman and I Saw Mammy Kissing Santa Claus.
Carol services were not concerts, they were a way towards God, and a church was not an appropriate place for a concert, the document emphasised. Mr Pádraig McIntyre, director of sacred music with the diocese, said the guidelines were drawn up in response to increased demand from organisations and individuals for churches to be used as concert settings.
There was also some confusion between a carol concert, appropriate for a setting away from a church, and a carol service. Often the requests came under the guise of charitable events, and priests and friars were being asked to give over the churches for concerts as the money was to go towards charity, he said.
"As a concert setting, churches are beautiful acoustically. But their purpose is a different one.
"A church is not an appropriate place for a Christmas concert," Mr McIntyre said. In particular, entrance to churches must be without payment and open to all, the guidelines state.
Mr McIntyre said a carol service was doing something different from a concert.
"It is trying to create an encounter with God. A concert, while it may have that outcome, doesn't set itself up that way."
The Anglican tradition had set up the service of nine carols and nine readings which first began in King's College, Cambridge, in the early 1900s, and the guidelines drawn up by the diocese had learned from that.
Mr McIntyre paid tribute, in particular, to the tradition of the carol service in the Church of Ireland in Killarney, established under Canon Brian Lougheed, now retired.
There was room for inspired text other than scripture in the carol service, Mr McIntyre said.
However, the origin of some of the carol material in use today was "varied".
It was drawn from the Victorian era, from the dances at the pagan feast of Saturnalia and from the medieval mystery plays and other areas.
"Not all this music is necessarily suited to the liturgy," he said.
Dimmed lights, drama and movement that does not draw attention to itself, a central place assigned to the crib and the cross and silence are among the recommendations.
Applause should be kept until after the carol service as it broke the flow of the liturgy, and collections for charity, while laudable, were best left to after the service, the guidelines suggest.