Christmas music 24/7

The "Christmas season" has officially begun. This is so according to both the Christian calendar (yesterday was Advent Sunday) and the Capitalist calendar (Friday was "Black Friday"). Plus, Santa arrived safely at Macy's at the end of the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is another way of keeping track of these things.

Last year we had two FM stations here in Philadelphia running the same mix of schmaltzy Christmas music all through December. This year, apparently to get a jump on their competitor, "Sunny 104.5" started its all-Christmas-all-the-time format the day after Halloween.

This premature celebration is annoying for a host of reasons. I don't expect corporate radio to respect the significance of Advent Sunday, but their disrespect for Miracle on 34th Street was surprising. I also think they're confusing cause and effect with regard to "holiday spirit." Hearing the umpteenth repetition of, say, Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" does not inspire feelings of sentimental warmth. It works the other way around. It is only because of the sentimental fuzziness and nostalgia we feel around the holidays that we are able to tolerate hearing that song even once.

Clear Channel's other "Sunny" stations are also following this all-Christmas format, including 102.7 Sunny FM in Lynchburg, Va.

Lynchburg is also home to Jerry Falwell's parachurch fiefdom, including his Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University and "Liberty Counsel," the litigious reconfiguration of his earlier right-wing political organization The Moral Majority.

Falwell's latest fund-raising/attention-grabbing scheme is his "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." He claims to believe that Christmas is "under attack" from the same secular humanists he holds responsible for integrating the public schools, teaching science and otherwise trying to force God-fearing people to abide by their secular, Englightenment, Jeffersonian "Constitution."

Salon's Michelle Goldberg has an excellent dissection of this Defense of Christmas idea. It's a recycled version of a John Birch Society effort from the 1950s, Goldberg shows -- one that followed Henry Ford's argument in a 1921 tract called "The International Jew."

It's worth sitting through the flash ad to read all of her article, "How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas." (The subtitle is: "The right-wing crusade against the liberal 'war on Christmas' is great for rallying the troops. Too bad the war doesn't exist.") Some highlights:

This year the war on Christmas canard has come early, and with it the latest opportunity for religious conservatives to cast themselves as the oppressed victims of secular tyrants. ...

Despite [Alliance Defense Fund trial lawyer Mike] Johnson's lamentations, one can in fact offer Christmas greetings without legal counsel. Christmas trees are permitted in public schools. (They're considered secular symbols.) Nativity scenes are allowed on public property, although if the government erects one, it has to be part of a larger display that also includes other, secular signs of the holiday season, or displays referring to other religions. ... Students are allowed to distribute religious holiday cards and literature in school. If the administration tries to stop them, the ACLU will step in to defend the students' free-speech rights, as they did in 2003 when teenagers in Massachusetts were suspended for passing out candy canes with Christian messages.

In fact, there is no war on Christmas. What there is, rather, is a burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, exaggerated anecdotes and increasingly organized hostility to the American Civil Liberties Union. ...

Read the whole thing for the tasty quotes from Americhristians about the ACLU's reign of terror and the "counterrevolution" being fought for "Christian America."

Dr. Falwell is, of course, one of these counterrevolutionaries. Falwell also, apparently, does not listen to 102.7 Sunny FM. If he did, he'd find it harder to argue that the celebration of "Christmas" was under attack.

The Roanoke/Lynchburg station's Christmas playlist is nearly identical to that of its clone here in Philly. I subjected myself to 100 songs worth of its programming to see if, as Falwell argues, "Christmas" is losing ground to a generic "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays."

Here's a breakdown of those 100 songs:

Sacred carols: 28

"Merry Christmas" songs: 46

Santa songs: 9

Novelty songs: 3

Winter songs: 14

Songs with "Christmas" in the title: 34*

More than a fourth of the songs they're playing come straight out of the hymnal. That hardly seems to support Falwell's thesis that a secular conspiracy is "secularizing" Christmas.

But Falwell is claiming more than just that Christmas is being commercialized, or that what Linus called "the real meaning of Christmas" is being marginalized. Falwell is claiming that the phrase "Merry Christmas" and the word "Christmas" itself is under attack.

This is preposterous.

Tune in to 102.7 and you'll hear that word and that phrase over and over again. And although it's been said many times, many ways, it will be repeated three more times before the end of the chorus.

The all-Christmas-music radio format -- replicated in every Clear Channel market -- proves that Falwell doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Or at least that Falwell doesn't much care whether or not what he preaches is true.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* I'm including "Feliz Navidad." You know, Jose Feliciano, ya got no complaints.

Comments

[wintermute]

A radio station here in Cincinnati started playing all Christmas songs on November 1st.

In a few years time, they'll be playing them 12 months of the year.

Like Lou Reed said, it's Christmas in February.

[Brennan]

I subjected myself to 100 songs worth of its programming...

Your noble self-sacrifice will be remembered. *salutes*

[pharoute]

I'm sure Falwell both has a clue and knows what he's saying isn't true. But he also knows that his donations go up everytime he says "The ACLU is coming to take your religion away."
Again with the strong theme of "persecution as identity" in "fundementalist" Christianity.

[Josh]

You know, Jose Feliciano, ya got no complaints.

Heh. This is the second obscure Fargo reference I have seen in the last month. The other one went out on a college radio station in Boston, it was iirc "Stan, you know, Grossman." I called them up and said "So you went and married Norm son-of-a-Gunderson." Good times. Man I love the Coens.

[Steve]

You know...I'm a Christian...and I celebrate Christmas because it is the birth of Jesus.

I also happen to enjoy schmaltzy Christmas music and the other earthy traditions (christmas trees, gift giving, lights, cookie baking, etc.).

But, for goodness sake, can our culture do anything without running it into the ground? Anything we mildly enjoy must be done and redone and copied and overdone until we are sick of it.

Moderation, folks, moderation!

Also, when something isn't there all the time, it is more special. The reason we like Christmas music is because we only listen to it occasionally, so it brings back memories and warm feelings...the more they string it out, it loses its specialness, because it is everyday ordinary.

We used to know the joy of when strawberries were in season...now they are always available. And I used to really like Toblerone bars when my Dad would travel and bring one home for me...but now I can get them in the local grocery store. Do I ever buy them now? No.

[Andrew Hickey]

See also http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/2005/11/administering-corporal-punishment-to.html#comments

[Scott]

Walkin' "Round in Women's Underwear

Lacy things the wife is missin', didn't ask for her permission
I'm wearin' her clothes, her silk pantyhose,
walkin' 'round in women's underwear

In the store, there's a teddy, with little straps, like spaghetti
It holds me so tight, like handcuffs at night,
walkin' 'round in women's underwear

In the office, there's a guy named Melvin
He pretends that I am Murphy Brown
He'll say "Are you ready?" I'll say "Whoa, man,
Let's wait until the wife is outta' town!"

Later on, if you wanna', we can dress like Madonna
Put on some eye shade, and join the parade,
Walkin' 'round in women's underwear

[Keith]

When has Faldwell ever notticed or even cared if he's preaching lies or truth? As long as he repeats the words "Jesus" and "God" every few seconds, he keeps the loyal listeners happy. Filling up the inbetweens with hateful nonsense is just a hobby, something he does to amuse himself inbetween streams of religious buzzwords.

[Evan]

"Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." There it is, right there. That says it all.

Falwell doesn't want anyone to be friends. He wants people to hate each other. Cheerful holiday greetings are a way of being friendly, so therefore they must be imbued with suspicion, converted into angry shibboleths, the better to divide us all into hostile factions.

When you've got people taking offense at the phrase "have a happy holiday," you're halfway to a nice, bloody religious war.

"Friend or Foe Christmas". Is it even possible to be less Christian than that?

[Kevin]

Incidentally, the ACLU has also defended Falwell himself.

[Josh]

Extra proof that Christmas is not under attack: This weekend I caught Paradise Now at a local Landmark Theater, and yes, they were playing Christmas music.

Jingle Bell Rock. Before a movie about suicide bombers. It was mighty, mighty surreal.

[coriolis]

But Fred, those Hymnie things are not of God. How many times did they play "My God is the only God" and other praise tunes?

I think we have a clone of that station here in Detroit.

[L]

Of course there's no war on Christmas. If nothing else, it'd be bad for business.

Steve: No. No we can't do anything without running it into the ground in this society. Moderation is never contemplated. That'd be bad for business too.

In my own tradition Advent is a 40-day period of abstinence and prayer in preparation for the Christmas Day celebration -- which *begins* 12 days of feasting, ending on "Twelfth Night", Epiphany Eve. (This is the "Twelve Days of Christmas" of the song.) Nowadays people are so partied out from the previous month of celebration that Christmas Day *ends* the celebration instead of begins it! I'm amazed they have the energy to drag themselves out for New Year's, frankly.

This results in two personal irritations for me above and beyond the constant background noise of cheesy (and even sacred) holiday music: the increasing rarity after Christmas of commercially prepared eggnog -- which I cannot drink before Christmas since eggs and dairy are among those things I need to abstain from -- just when it should be most widely available; and the difficulty of finding a decent Christmas tree when I don't want the thing in my house for several weeks prior. I want to put the thing up as close to Christmas Eve as practical, and take it down on Epiphany -- but all the Christmas tree farms in the surrounding mountains close down long before Christmas Eve, and the tree lots only have needle-shedding fire hazards left by then.

[pharoute]

L: Amen!

[VKW]

Don't think of it as a 'war' on Christmas, think of it as a hostile takeover by secular commercial interests. All very capitalistic and Christian, no?

[Mnemosyne]

Let me put in a plug for my two favorite Christmas songs of all time.

"Fairytale of New York," by the Pogues, with its classic opening lines:

It was Christmas Eve, babe
In the drunk tank ...

Also, the best song Harvey Danger ever did, "Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes)," with its portrait of Christmas away from home:

I’m working for a holiday wage
My family is two time zones away,
I’m supposed to call them
My vodka and snow is melting
The alcohol isn’t helping

And for laughs, I have to admit I like Blink-182's "I Won't Be Home for Christmas."

[Amanda]

But you don't understand the mindset. To Falwell & ilk, the very presence of competing ideas signifies that they are under attack.

If there's a single non-Christmas-specific song in that hundred, then Christmas is in danger. That is how they operate.

[bellatrys]

Rupert Murdoch is pushing this hard on both sides of the Atlantic again this year, customized for cultural nuance. Falafel O'Lielly's audience wouldn't understand about the ASBO reference.

[bellatrys]

Of course the classic carol and proto-filk "Deck us all with Boston Charlie" is undoubtedly considered blasphemous by the Theocons - or would be if they remembered it.

[Ray]

"Don't think of it as a 'war' on Christmas, think of it as a hostile takeover by secular commercial interests."

Oi, that's a bloody cheek. The fact that Christmas is on the 25th of December is due to a hostile takeover by _religious_ interests, who wanted to associate their god with existing holidays, and incorporated existing traditions - like the Christmas tree - as support. Its like Microsoft buying out smaller companies to kill of competition.
The real meaning of Christmas has always been "These are the darkest days of the year - so let's have a big party to cheer ourselves up!"

[L]

Ray: It wasn't exactly like that, but you're not too far off in some ways. Yes, pretty much everyone in the world has a party scheduled around the Winter Solstice, which is just about the most depressing time of the year. This by itself was sufficient to schedule Christmas around that time, but this was done in a time when Christians were still a persecuted minority. Any kind of "hostile takeover" such as you seem to be contemplating was out of the question at the time. (Nor was it universal: it seems to have originated in Rome and took some time to spread elsewhere.) The Christmas Tree didn't become customary until after the conversion of certain Germanic tribes -- tradition ascribes it to St. Boniface, who deliberately chose a young evergreen as a counterpoint to the ancient oak they formerly revered -- but this was some centuries after the holiday was established.

[Ray]

The Catholic encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm
has a long article on early dates for celebrating Christmas in the early church. For centuries it wasn't celebrated at all, and the date of the 25th of December wasn't fixed on until the late 4th century - after the ascension of Constantine.
(Even before Christianity was the official religion of the empire, it made sense for Christians to try to associate their celebrations with existing holidays. Its easier to convert people if you tell them the don't have to drop all their old superstitions as long as they change the names.)

[\Andrew Hickey]

Fairytale Of New York is the *only* Christmas song I can stand (except for Holy Evening by Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys). One of the few bearable things about the season of enforced jollity is being in Woolworth's or Wal-Mart or somewhere and hearing "You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk lying there almost dead on that drip in that bed/You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot, happy Christmas me arse I pray God it's our last" coming over the tannoy after some saccharine nonsense like the Brenda Lee track...

[Mike Timonin]

There are plenty of lovely bitter Christmas songs out there. What about "Father Christmas" by the Kinks - "Father Christmas, give us some money, don't mess around with your silly toys. We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over..." - also, "I believe in Father Christmas" by ELP, which is simply classic - "You said there'd be snow at Christmas, you said there'd be peace on Earth. But instead, it just kept on raining, a veil of tears for the Virgin birth". Great stuff.

[toot]

Actually, 'Christmas At K-Mart' by Rootboy Slim is pretty good, not to mention Mojo Nixon's Christmas album - on the other hand, not too many stations are likely to play such classics.

[Mnemosyne]

The Christmas Tree didn't become customary until after the conversion of certain Germanic tribes -- tradition ascribes it to St. Boniface, who deliberately chose a young evergreen as a counterpoint to the ancient oak they formerly revered -- but this was some centuries after the holiday was established.

I always thought it was Martin Luther who really popularized the Christmas tree. But what do I know from Martin Luther -- I was raised Catholic.

Another fun Christmas album: Merry Mex-Mas by El Vez (the Mexican Elvis). He's got a great version of "Mamacita, Donde Esta Santa Claus?"

Speaking of weird cross-cultural Christmas traditions, the names of Santa's reindeer are a mess because they originally came from Dutch, not German, and later people tried to "fix" them by making them German. See this Snopes.com article about it:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/donner.asp

[lbb]

And now there's a big flap about the big tree at the Prudential Center in Boston being referred to by some as a "holiday tree". As a former Bostonian of many years, and someone who's always loved the story behind the tree, I'm angered by this. The tree is an enduring symbol of gratitude for help in a time of need; it could have been anything, but I suppose it was chosen because a)Nova Scotia's got lots of big beautiful trees and b)it was something that they could keep on giving any year. The expression of thanks was what mattered to the people of Halifax then, not the "Christmas" part.

[Lizthefair]

I've been thinking about the all Christmas Music all the time stations-- but mostly from the "would it kill you to throw in some dradlel songs" perspective.

It seems unnecessarily exclusionary to focus on just Christmas. But then, maybe that's the point.

I've been toying with sending a couple of Chanukah CDs to our station here, but I don't suppose that would do anything.

[Lila]

Wow. That's the first I've heard of the Halifax Explosion. Thanks for the sobering history lesson.

[L]

Ray: Actually, as anyone can see from reading that article, the history of the feast is rather complicated. In origin it is certainly not post-Constantinian. In the East, at any rate, it was not distinguished from Epiphany until later, and seems to have been celebrated from around 200. (Although not on 25 December.)

[B-W]

I have to agree with Lizthefair, although I'm speaking as a Christian. The only remotely-Chanukah-related song I've EVER heard on the radio or in stores is Adam Sandler's Chanukah song....

It wouldn't hurt to have a bit more variety out there. (Of course, the right-wingers would simply see that as another attack along the lines of their "if you're not for us, you're against us" theology.)

[bad Jim]

This Tom Lehrer classic get some play on one Los Angeles classical station:

I'm spending Hannukah in Santa Monica
Wearing sandals, lighting candles by the sea
I spent Shavuos in East Saint Louis
A charming spot but clearly not the spot for me...

Those eastern winters, I can't endure 'em
So every year I pack my gear and come out here til Purim

Rosh Hashona I spend in Arizona
And Yom Kippah way down in Mississippah

But in December there's just one place for me
Mid the California flora I'll be lighting my menorah
Like a baby in its cradle I'll be playing with my draydel
Here's to Judas Maccabeus, Boy if he could only see us

Spending Hannukah, in Santa Monica, By the Sea!

[McDuff]

I'm going to sue this "Friends or Foe Christmas" thing on behalf of the Druids of England. I mean, how many Solstice songs do you hear on the radio these days?

[Ray]

L, I don't want to get into a big argument over this, but I said, "For centuries [Christmas] wasn't celebrated at all, and the date of the 25th of December wasn't fixed on until the late 4th century - after the ascension of Constantine." The fact that Alexandrians celebrated the epiphany in January hardly contradicts my point.

[Ray]

(and if, as Wikipedia suggests, the date of the Epiphany was based on the date of Hanukkah, we're back to the original point of repuposing existing feast days for a new religion)

[Sparticus]

For an incomplete but on-going actually properly researched history of Christmas see this part of my website. Sorry for the self plug but it is relevant. And sorry for the lack of a complete story but actually going to libraries and looking things up in books takes a lot longer than research on teh internet. Not that it's often that much more helpful though.

[NancyP]

I love Christmas music, but of the classical variety - English choirs with anthems and traditional carols, the Messiah, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Britten's Ceremony of Carols, etc. Some folk singers do lovely renditions as well - Loreena McKennitt has 2 Christmas/Solstice albums.

It would be lovely (but only a dream, alas!) if Falwell and other time-wasters would actually do pre-Christmas messages like "buy toys and clothes for needy children and adults", "volunteer at your homeless shelter, or bake them a big batch of your best Christmas cookies", "weather-proof a poor person's windows today", etc. Practical things.

[Ray]

"a Pagan festival that was Christianised and made holy and how this was an important step in the Church’s plan to brainwash the heathen and take over the world"

In Ireland, most of the minor 'holy' sites (wells, mainly) used to be pagan sites that were just renamed, there are lots of old traditions that were renamed as Christian traditions, and Croagh Patrick, Ireland's most important pilgrimage site, was an important site in pre-Christian days too. Its not that the Pope held a secret council in the Roman catacombs to plot the brainwashing of the heathen Irish. It's that the heathen Irish wanted to keep some of their old traditions when they signed up to a new religion, and the missionaries were happy to find ways to accommodate them. It's hardly unique to Ireland.

It's hardly unique to Christianity (or religion) either. Didn't the Mithras cult start adopting some Christian images in the period they were competing? I'm no expert on Greek and Roman cultural competition, but I find it hard to believe that all the similarities in the pantheons are coincidental.

For me, the point of saying that Christianity deliberately incorporated existing pagan customs is not to argue that Christianity is therefore empty, or less valid than the traditions it incorporated. But when people argue that the real meaning of Christmas is being lost behind a general winter celebration, it's useful to point out that the winter celebration came first. It's as if there was a medieval folk-tune that some composer picked up and reworked into a hym, but now the hymn has been rewritten as a rock song. It's fine to argue that the hymn was better than the rock song, as long as you don't argue that the hymn is the _real_ version of the song.

[Lisa]

Here's another Hanukkah song I like:

"Hooray for Hanukkah"

(to the tune of Hooray for Hollywood)

When the days grow short and the nights grow cold and its holiday time at home
Those memories of childhood are where I long to roam
This special song for a special time brings back that special joy
Its message still is true today for every girl .... and boy.

Hooray for Hanukkah, let's play the trumpet and harmonica
And let's remember Mr. Mattathias, he had a bias against the worship of clay
And oh the oil, was oh so loyal, it lasted for a week and an .. extra day.

Hooray for Hanukkah, when Jews from Brooklyn to Salonika
Recall a Macabee and tale of glory, it's quite a story
It makes you glad it's today
With our deliria we're not inferior
Hooray for Hanukkah, ........

Hooray for Hanukkah
Where every Betty and Veronica
Can rest assured that mean old antiochus and hocus pocus
Were surely destined to flop
So have a latke and a little vodka, coz Judah Macabee set it up on top

Hooray for Hanukkah, from Tel Aviv to Santa Monica
Menorahs get lit up in celebration of liberation, our people are finally free
Another happy feast it's from the Middle East
Hooray for Hanukkah...

[4jkb4ia`]

"It is only because of the warmth and fuzziness of the holiday that we can handle hearing that song even once"
Hear, hear!
I was glad to see Mnemosyne recommend "Fairytale of New York" too. I am not alone.

[G. Moss]

You are an idiot !

[ptt]

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/board/viewthread.php?tid=3235&page=1
found googling "on junk lying there almost dead on that drip in that bed"