In the course of writing opinion pieces, it is obvious that you really can’t please everyone all the time. Differences of opinion make the world go round.
Now the angriest a reader ever became over something that I wrote was from a piece that wasn’t about politics, religion or anything as complicated as that. It was about the singer of a Christmas song that I really disliked. It wasn’t the singer I disliked. It was the song. The song was Have a Holly Jolly Christmas and the singer was Burl Ives. I referred to him in a piece as “the dead fat guy.” A reader went berserk and sent me a nasty letter which ended with the phrase “HE HAS FAMILY!!!.” I do doubt that Burl Ives’ family read my article, but the lesson was well learned. If you criticize people’s tastes you can get pushback. It is a sensitive matter.
That is my introduction to some thoughts about some of the songs of Christmas that I really don’t like much. They can’t all be Silent Night you know. Some of the songs just aren’t that great and some are just awful. A tune from my all-time list of songs of the Yule I hate is Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. Why? It sounds harmless enough but to me it is a betrayal of the whole Christmas theme. It is as far from the idea of the manger in Bethlehem and the idea of peace on earth as you can get. I guess I am old. I do like Adeste Fideles and things like that.
My thoughts of Christmas, like your own, have roots in the past. In many ways we are haunted by “the ghost of Christmas past”. We find ourselves with thoughts of an earlier world of family, celebration, and church. In my own memory bank midnight mass on Christmas Eve comes to mind. That was Christmas with ceremony and celebration afterwards and more than anything else, family. However, all the good songs of Christmas don’t have to have a religious base. I’m not a religious nut by any means. One of the real non-religious but highly spiritual backgrounds to Christmas is that concept of ‘family’ so songs about being home for Christmas, or missing home at Christmas, strike a chord in our hearts. Being with someone or without someone at Christmas is a theme that moves us.
Songs WITH a religious and modern base can still sneak into my Christmas play list. I loved the phenomenon of The Little Drummer Boy. It was a song on an album from The Harry Simeon Chorale called Sing We Now of Christmas. It was released back 1958. The Little Drummer Boy was so popular that year as a single from the album that the next year the same album was released again under the new title, The Little Drummer Boy. The rest is history. Every high school glee club from here to Vancouver is singing Rum-pa-pum-pum in December. It is still a nice tune although there is no Little Drummer Boy to be found in either the old or New Testament.
The dark side of this whole song thing is difficult to even write about because someone is going to be offended. The song that comes to mind at once is the vile I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. It violates everything about the mystery of the season for children. It represents an arrow pointed in the wrong direction, aimed at breaking a magic spell. So does Santa Baby. It is all about a chimney and a meeting. Enough said.
Do I have a favourite Christmas song? Yes, of course. It is probably yours, too. If you ask 10 people, their pick for the best Christmas song of all time at least seven will say it is Silent Night. It speaks loudly and simply to the great underlying quest of the Christmas season and of Christianity in general in the larger sense. That quest is the search and pursuit of peace. That simple concept underlies our Christian beliefs and reaches out to “our better angels.” Having it expressed musically is part of the magic of what is still a holy season.
You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]