Symfonije anielskie (1630) by Jan Żabczyc – an early baroque court poet – are a very popular collection of carols. This collection – of a very limited volume (only 36 texts) – is a part of the Polish religious songs tradition. This article is an attempt to analyse one type of a carol – New Year carol genre in this collection that is a very important part in the development of the whole genre. The researches prove that in Żabczyc’s times there was not a fixed name for the text about Christ’s birth. A carol genre only evolved. An ancient, antireligious New Year carol was its most developed type. Yet other forms either fixed (theological carol) or disappeared (idyllic carol, mythological carol) or just began to shape (pastoral carol). Differences between them were not clear. This article presents a few typical features of most stabilized genre form that is a New Year carol.