Christmas music

I took several years off from listening to Christmas music on the radio. If you've ever worked retail from October to January, you understand why. But I always have loved certain songs. And now that I've got a two-year-old who loves music we're playing the Christmas station, and having a wonderful time dancing and singing along with her. She knows instinctively what I'd forgotten - Christmas music is about joy. I'm even rediscovering my affection for some songs that had paled from over-exposure.

And I'm rediscovering this: It's a mixed bag, Christmas music. As mixed as our feelings about Christmas, as mixed as all the things Christmas has come to represent for our culture.

Some of the songs are just fun, silly, nostalgic-for-simpler-times songs, like the ones about sleigh rides and snow and open fires and kids excited about presents and Santa. These are the ones my two-year-old likes best, the ones that set her shrieking with glee and tap-dancing around the room. And I'm glad, because that's got me liking them again too, even if they are silly and aren't about the capital T True Meaning of Christmas.

Still, I feel good about our parenting decision to not have the kid believe in Santa whenever I hear "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". I imagine the kid twenty years later telling his therapist "So I thought at first that I'd caught Mommy cheating on Daddy, and I was shouting "Oh God oh God oh God Mommy's kissing Santa Claus, where's my Daddy?!?!?!", and then "Santa" turned around and it WAS Daddy. Then they told me, 'See, honey, it's okay, we haven't been committing adultery, we've just been lying to you for the past six years...'"

I have, in some ways, a very unhealthy imagination.

Some songs are so bereft of either musicianship or joy that they make me want to vomit. "Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart" springs to mind. I've been pleased to note that even my two-year-old has good enough taste to know these songs for the crap they are. Tonight she said "I don't like that one, Daddy, play the Jingle Bell song". We switched stations to the "Reindeer Song" (Rudolph) and were content.

Some songs are incredibly dull, like "So This Is Christmas" (and by the way, doesn't it sound like the children in the chorus are singing "Ho-ly Mo-ses, this is bo-ring"? It always does to me...) Ironically, the songs that are deliberate attempts to waken my social conscience tend to make me LESS charitable - partly because I find the music tedious, and partly because I don't like pampered millionaires trying to make me feel guilty about other people's poverty and suffering. I walk away wanting to pick apart the stupid song rather than wanting to give to charity: "Oh, there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas, huh, Bono? What about on Mount Kilimanjaro? Always snow there, isn't there, you big liar-mouth? And why would they want snow in famine-stricken areas anyway? They need RAIN. Less genocide, and more RAIN."

...and so on. Not, I'm afraid, a song that inspires the best in me.


But the songs I've always loved, even when I was working in retail and hearing them TWENTY TIMES A DAY, EVERY DAY, FOR TWO MONTHS, are the hymns to the Christ-child, the true Christmas carols - O Holy Night, Handel's Messiah, Silent Night, Adeste Fideles. These are the ones that strip away the scar tissue of cynicism, touch the soul beneath, and remind me of the deepest truths - Love became a child, a child stronger than hate, stronger than sin, stronger than death, and will not only cleanse the world of these things but will cleanse me too.

One story goes that when Handel’s Messiah was performed before the royal court, the king was so overcome by the Hallelujah Chorus that he stood up in reverence, because the presence of a King greater than he was palpable in the room. This is why everyone stands whenever the Hallelujah Chorus is sung.

Whether or not that story is true about the king, it says something true about us, and about Christmas music at its best. We need something from Beyond to show up every once in a while. We need songs that tear away the veil and make God’s presence so real to the hearers that even cynical, irreligious old politicians suddenly realize that they are naked before the Infinite, the Real, the terrifyingly Holy, and that they damn well better stand up and show some respect. Comes the Messiah, and we don't need Lennon or Bono whining at us to tell us it's time to love our neighbor. Love Himself is here in all His beauty, all His awful glory, and His very presence rebukes our selfishness, demands that we become better - and promises that we WILL become better.

O come, let us adore.



© John M. Munzer