Okay, right up front I will admit it: I'm THAT guy. I'm the guy that changes his entire listening habits while driving in the car this time of year and tunes in...
dunh-dunh--DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! (*Suspenseful music*--in case you were wondering)
...the Christmas songs.
Yeah, I know. I know. I've heard it all before: "It's too early for Christmas music." (You hear that one up until December 24th at 10:30pm, sometimes.) "It's so boring hearing the same songs over and over." (You hear that one from many fans of Top 40 music.) "It cheapens the true meaning of Christmas and the Incarnation to hear Britney Spears sing 'Silent Night.'" (Okay, you got a point with that last one.) But I just can't help it. I love to hear the music and I love to sing along. I like the fun secular stuff like "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" (Dean Martin's version is a hoot--although I can't figure out why Santa gets a German accent on the refrain; you think maybe Dean-o was a little...you know...drunk? Yeah, me neither). I love the carols like "O, Holy Night" (Josh Groban's version is about the only one that's really any good there; I mean, really, there are so many singers that don't need to sing that song--I want to say something funny here but there are too many options...um, how about a Kid Rock/Ozzy Osborne duet for that one? Yeah, that makes the point pretty well). And I love the unique new songs that pull the heart strings just right (although I am officially sick to death of "The Christmas Shoes;" sorry, Newsong; I love you guys, but if it hadn't gotten played a thousand too many times for it to actually leave any kind of emotional impression already, the Rob Lowe movies put it way over the top--Rob Lowe? Really? And "movies?" PLURAL?). I still can't wait to hear that song about Maria and the bird in the cage this year. That one makes my eyes all misty every time I hear it (that's not even a joke--I'm like a teenage girl or something; maybe if Rob Lowe made a movie about that one, it would cure me of it). I even like the funny songs.
(Nope, no parenthetical aside for that last one; they're funny already, right?)
But there's one thing that really bugs me about the whole Christmas music thing (although, if I counted that LeAnn Rimes/Elvis Presley duet of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," there would be several; seriously, have you heard that thing? It's just the Elvis version with LeAnn Rimes inserted in very awkwardly--like she heard the Nat King Cole/Natalie Cole version of "Unforgettable" and decided that--as the the true musical heir of Elvis--she needed to beat Lisa Marie to the punch, so she just found the first Elvis song she could lay hands on and recorded and mixed it over lunch one Tuesday--but maybe that's just me [EDIT 12/7/09: To be fair to LeAnn, it's actually "Here Comes Santa Claus (Santa Claus Comes Tonight)" not "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" (the backup singers do actually sing "Santa Claus is comin' to town" in the song though, so I guess I can be forgiven for my mistake; I forgive myself). And no, that doesn't make the song any better.] ): It's all the Christmas songs that not only aren't about the Incarnation or the true meaning of Christmas; they aren't about Christmas AT ALL.
There's this one category of "Songs About Winter That Just Become Songs About Christmas By Default No Matter What The Song Is Actually Talking About" (or "SAWTJBSACBDNMWTSIATA" for the net-savvy). I mean, I guess the "birthday party at the home of Farmer Gray" from "Sleigh Ride" could be for the Christ Child, but I kind of doubt it (the fact that that one version--it might be the one by the Carpenters; I don't know--sometimes it seems like all the really sappy Christmas songs are by the Carpenters--changes the lyric to "Christmas party at the home..." seems to indicate that, whoever did that version--Carpenter or not--thinks the birthday in question was not of the virginal variety and needed to be altered). And while it's lovely to imagine two young lovers walking along and pretending a snow man is the minister they want to marry them (okay, maybe "lovely" isn't the right word at all), what does that have to do with Christmas? I mean, I've never even seen it snow on Christmas Day around here! I think it came close once when I was maybe six or something but there hasn't been anything even near it for years now (must be a global warming thing; Al Gore totally needs to write us some new Christmas songs--they would certainly be inconvenient, if not entirely true). I will say that I give "Frosty the Snowman" a pass here, because "Frosty" got that greatest of all validations of true Christmas-ocity from my youth... a Rankin/Bass TV special.
I need to digress for a moment here and speak of the wonder of the Christmas TV special (a species not entirely removed from the Christmas song and just as curious). Rankin and Bass (presumably they had first names too) were the masters of the art. Most of their specials were pretty poorly stop-motion animated features of about an hour (they were not "claymation," by the way; they used wood puppets--I'm here to educate as well as entertain). The most famous of this variety is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. However, they also did some cel animated shows like the aforementioned Frosty the Snowman (a few years ago they made a sequel...FAIL...but I'll still watch it if it's on though, and yes, I am a bit of a sap; thanks for noticing). Now you may notice a theme with those two (and the not quite as well-known Santa Claus is Comin' to Town for that matter) of basing an entire hour of children's entertainment on a 2-3 minute (even shorter in "Rudolph"'s case) song. That meant there had to be a LOT of padding (it's the padding that gives "Frosty the Snowman" its legitimacy as a Christmas song, in my mind, since, in the cartoon, Santa Claus shows up for a little deux ex machina action, explaining that, since the recently melted Frosty was made with magical "Christmas Snow"--again with the snow!--a winter wind will reform him completely, leading Frosty to take off with Santa but promise--slightly twisting the actual lyrics of the song--"I'll be back on Christmas Day!" And yes, all of that is from memory; told you I was a sap). Also these specials featured the strange custom of adding in a narrator by animating in a fairly washed-up celebrity. While Frosty got the weirdest celeb pick--in the form of the Snoz himself, Jimmy Durante--Rudolph did the weirdest thing to its celebrity by representing Burl Ives as a kind of creepy-looking snowman (seriously, was I the only one that found him creepy?! He has these, like, dead eyes). Santa Claus featured Fred Astaire (thought it was Bing Crosby but Wikipedia says otherwise; also Mickey Rooney played Santa in that one!) as a mailman (better than Durante, who appears just to be some old guy following the kids around and talking about them). The celebrity always had to sing the song on which the special was based and tell the story. Later on, they kind of overstayed their welcome with a bunch of spinoffs (like Rudolph's Shiny New Year, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July and Santa Claus is Comin' for Kwanzaa...Okay, I made the last one up, but the others are all too real).
Still, the greatest Christmas special of all was not by Rankin/Bass. That would be the one and only A Charlie Brown Christmas. And while I will never understand how they made that scrawny little tree fill out its branches just by putting decorations on it (that really bugged me as a kid, and it still does; in any other Christmas special, that would be an epic fail, but nothing can ruin Charlie Brown...NOTHING!), how can you not love the sweet story and the weird repetitive dancing. It is also the only time all year you're likely to hear Scripture quoted on network TV (Linus is the MAN) and for that, it gets the mega-props.
Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, Christmas music that isn't even about Christmas! I could talk about "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (I know it was from a Christmas special--about the only truly classic one I didn't mention above, by the way--but the song is all a bunch of metaphors for how bad the Grinch is and, while it's funny, it ain't about Christmas; and yes, I realize that I just said "Frosty the Snowman" got a pass as a Christmas song because of its place in a Christmas special, and I know that's hypocritical, but it's my blog and I can contradict myself if I want to...Anyway, I like hearing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" this time of year, so I don't know what I'm complaining about in the first place...so...um, you might want to forget you read this whole parenthetical remark altogether--in fact, you probably already want to forget it...sorry), but it's probably best that I don't say a single word about it, so I won't. For the song that really bugs me, the one that just isn't a Christmas song and never should have been accepted as such, I have to turn to that great duo of the movie musical (no, not Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye; that was an actual Christmas musical, and a great one at that! Oh and you'll notice that all the songs from White Christmas didn't just suddenly become Christmas songs because they were in a Christmas musical--no, just the actual song about Christmas; Irving Berlin FTW). I'm talking about Rogers and Hammerstein (unlike Rankin and Bass, I'm not sure they actually had first names) and the song "My Favorite Things."
To understand my disdain for counting this song as a Christmas song, you need to go back into my childhood. You see, my sister's favorite movie growing up was The Sound of Music (a film that avoids being a total loss by throwing in a chase by Nazis at the end; I kid! I kid! It's actually pretty good and a somewhat true story, although I don't know if the real Maria Von Trapp broke out into song all the time; if she did, I bet the Captain was pretty sick of it before the honeymoon was even over), and she watched it ALL THE TIME. As such, I can sing (sadly) every song from it by memory. "My Favorite Things" is one of those songs. Is it sung at some big Christmas party? Are the children eagerly awaiting the coming of whoever the Austrian version of Santa Claus is? Is Maria, the former nun, telling them about the Christ Child? No, no and no. Maria sings the song to the kids when they all crowd in her room (are you ready for this?) when they're frightened by a thunderstorm. "What does that have to do with Christmas?," I hear you asking. Uh... well, it mentions "brown paper packages tied up with string." Oh, what's that you say? You don't use brown paper to wrap Christmas presents usually? Oh well, I guess maybe "MY FAVORITE THINGS" DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM!
Now if only I could convince someone in radio of that, there'd be one more slot for a real Christmas song...probably something by the Carpenters...something involving fireplaces, maybe...
Yeah, suddenly that doesn't sound like such a good idea after all...
No comments:
Post a Comment