After World War II, the restored Polish Republic set up a state-run music publishing house, which commissioned the young Lutoslawski to write a set of folk-based vocal music. Lutoslawski used for his sources several well-known Polish Christmas songs, many of which go back as far as five centuries. These traditional melodies are diatonic. Lutoslawski's accompaniments for piano are unobtrusively sophisticated and often surprising. Lutoslawski often uses the major and the minor third unpredictably, and makes other unexpected harmonic choices. The result is a fresh assortment of Christmas songs that have become popular in Poland. In the 1980s, Charles Bodman Rae, working under the supervision of the composer, made orchestrations of the carols as translated into English and thereby created a very useful store of fresh Christmas music for concerts. The predominant theme of the songs, owing to the early influence of Franciscans in establishing Christmas celebration, is the humble circumstances of the Savior's birth.

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