Mozart spent a third of his life travelling: 3720 days, a clever mind has calculated. The six-year-old child prodigy celebrated Christmas 1763 at the invitation of the French King Louis XVI in the palace grounds of Versailles. Twenty years later, the genius, who had meanwhile settled in Vienna, struggled restlessly from one concert to the next, composing day and night. The Piano Concerto in B flat Major K. 450, which Mozart himself premiered, also dates from this period.

The English composer Gerald Finzi set texts by the 17th century poet Thomas Traherne to music in his Christmas cantata Dies Natalis. They subtly reflect the joy of the Christ Child.

Robert Schumann's 2nd Symphony was composed during the Christmas season of 1845. Clara Schumann wrote to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: "My husband delighted and surprised me at Christmas with the sketches for a new symphony; he is full of music now, so that there is really nothing to do with him."