Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring<\/a>” for some reason, mostly because I like saying it, I suppose, although there isn’t anything particularly Christmassy about it. But that’s the general gist of the thing. Songs about the birth and divinity of Jesus, and about his transformative power. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, “O Come All Ye Faithful”, . The winner in this category is “Silent Night”, with the good “Gloria in excelsis deo” tune running a close second. Worst is, of course, “The Little Drummer Boy”.\nSecond category: Genuine Old-Fashioned Pre-War British and American secular hymns. These are songs that are about the experience of celebrating Christmas, but make no reference to Jesus or churchin’. Wassail songs, of course, and “I’ll be Home for Christmas (if only in my dreams)”, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” sort of thing. The best is ... well, I’ll pick “The Christmas Song”, the one that starts ‘Chestnuts roasting...’ over the obvious “White Christmas”. The worst is “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”, although of course “Feliz Navidad” has a pretty good claim.\n
Third are solstice songs. Well, winter songs that have nothing specifically to do with either Jesus or the Red Suit. “Frosty the Snowman”, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”, “Let it Snow”. The best of these is probably “Jingle Bells”, although I do like “Winter Wonderland”.\n
Last there are new songs, which I give no examples of and want none. I know there are some, I hear them in stores, and I ignore them there and will ignore them here, other than acknowledging their existence. Some are probably explicitly religious; I wouldn’t know. Well, and without actually suggesting that I have done any adjudicating, I’ll declare that “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” is the best of these. The worst? Look, if there are any worse than “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”, I for one do not care to know about it.\n
The point to all this is that I hear a good deal of each of these sorts of songs in malls and such. I might expect that stores which choose to downplay the, ahem, reason for the season, would also choose to avoid music in the first category, or at least avoid those with lyrics in the English language. Not so. Let me point out that I have no objection to these religious songs being played in private establishments, nor even semi-public establishments such as malls and sidewalks outside stores. I’m just observing.\n
The question for Gentle Readers is this: Do you observe the same thing? I wonder whether there are regional differences, whether the Barnes & Noble down the block from Zabar’s avoids mention of the Birth of the Babe, while the Books-a-Billion in Tulsa plays sacred music all month. I think, based on a year in Virginia, that there are differences, but the thing I noticed was a greater proportion of that dreaded fourth category in the Old Dominion, rather than a greater proportion of the first. And while I’m at it, what are your favorites in the categories? Have I missed a worst?\n
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So. It seems to Your Humble Blogger that there are four categories of Christmas music. First, there\u2019s the category I\u2019ll call Lessons and Carols. Sacred music, Church music. I tend to call this stuff \u201cJesu, Joy of Man\u2019s Desiring\u201d for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-music-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17629,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087\/revisions\/17629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}