Christmas Music

An interesting thing happens as the Christmas holiday rolls around. I'm not going to dredge up old complaints about the festivities beginning earlier every year or the other things, because I think that's just too boring to bear. No, what I still find interesting has to do with the music. Like clockwork, soft rock stations in each American radio market scrap their regular format of Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow for Christmas music. It's true enough that both men along with other practitioners of the strange art called soft rock stay in the game with their own renditions of holiday tunes, but that's besides the point. Isn't it interesting that no other format judges itself to be unworthy of staying on when something so necessary as yuletide hits must carve out some room for a month. It must be at least a little demoralizing. Jazz music, God bless it, is uncommercial enough to require the fostering care of public radio stations, and the blues are worse off than that, often relegated to a few hours a week on the same stations. Still, it's soft rock that takes the hit. Well, we must count our blessings at this time of year- at least it's off the air for a little while.

At this time of year, I always find myself embroiled in an argument over the fanciful standby 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'. My entire life I have interpreted it to be a song depicting an affair between a little boy's mother and Santa Claus. It seems like a tame affair, entailing no more than kissing as it does, but an incidence of infidelity nonetheless. I swear that if you pore over the lyrics and listen to it again and again, you will find nothing in it explicitly stating that it's merely the boy's father posing as Santa Claus, and yet the preponderance of people I speak to say this is the case. Show me the proof. No matter what comes to light, there's not adequate subtext to effectively convey it, but I'm open to having my mind changed about the songwriter's intent. Prove me wrong.

A friend complains of too few songs devoted to the actual Biblical concern of Christmas getting airtime. I can't argue with that, as few if any directly address Jesus or the Nativity. Among my traditional favorites are 'O Tannenbaum', 'O Holy Night' and 'Come All Ye Faithful'. It's also hard to resist the wartime ones, fraught with sadness as they are. Many of the more contemporary songs are great too, even those bearing what might be called subversive or transgressive messages. I like 'Santa Baby', whose narrator strikes what must be called an untraditional tone as she wheedles for various material goods from Santa. It goes without saying that I don't care for any song which naturally lends itself to be employed for one of those little singing animal things you buy at a drugstore. How much can I be expected to take of that?

I don't listen to the seasonal musical exclusively throughout the month, but begin with a little and progressively increase the proportion. That variety that has built up with each year's popular recording stars adding to the glut helps ease the strain that would come ordinarily if we had only the handful of original songs without anything to supplement them. As it is, I do enjoy this season of music greatly, although I do appreciate the complains by those who can't stand the pervasiveness of it all. There are undoubtedly some lovely areas whose dominant religion is not Christianity around the equator where one might spend December. I heartily encourage anyone seeking to evade the spirit of the season to investigate further at their leisure.