The present paper seeks to outline a theoretical framework for the study of Christmas carols exploring the potential of Peirce’s and Morris’s ideas on semiosis. Christmas carols are viewed as signs that ‘act’ in the space of religious culture. Entering into a dispute with Morris we single out three dimensions of semiosis: code (refers to the study of the nature of sign vehicles), informational (the affiliation to knowledge as a set of relatively stable collective interpretants), and cultural (the relationship with the system of evaluations and values in the mind of the interpreter). Proceeding from the suggested dimensions three methodological approaches to the semiosic interpretation are substantiated: formal or codosemiosic approach, cognitive or infosemiosic approach, and communicative or sociosemiosic approach.The discussion is focused on the following arguments: 1) two aspects are relevant for codosemiosic approach: (a) the stock of perceivable items from which expressions in Christmas carols are selected; (b) sets of rules that govern the selection of expressions and their assignment to contents; 2) the action of carols ‘becoming informative’ occurs through establishing correspondences between the components of the basic semiotic triad: reality, knowledge, signs. At this stage of the analysis the issue of the Nativity story and its position on the triad is discussed; 3) the context of religious culture when treated from the standpoint of Lotman’s idea of culture, correlates with a space of mind for the production of semiosis.The arguments are substantiated by the reference to the most popular Anglophone, Polish, and Ukrainian carols.