A Christmas Plantation Song, said to have been first published in Slave Songs of the United States, edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. [It was] edited by Thomas P. Fenner, Virginia, 1909. The songs in this collection were collected during the American Civil War from slaves in Georgia and South Carolina. It could be called an American shepherd carol, resembling a European shepherd carol, with the principal singer giving out the line and the chorus repeating the refrain (a 'question-and-answer' carol). https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/