Yesterday I had a thought. I was sitting at my soldering table in A-school and the more vocal members of my class insisted on putting on Christmas music. I obliged, figuring that it was far better than soldering in silence. Not that I was necessarily opposed to Christmas music in the first place; it's early in the season and I haven't gotten burned out on it yet. Couple that with the fact that I didn't really get a Christmas season at all last year, having been on patrol on board the USCGC ALERT (hereafter referred to as "The Dirty Six-Thirty") off the coast of Central America. It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 85 degrees at 2:00 a.m. Suffice it to say, I feel like this year I have some holiday lost time to make up for. So all was well in the soldering lab until it hit me, as it hits me every year (except last) early in the holiday season. The shrieking, god awful, nails-on-a-chalkboard-esque introduction to Bing Crosby's beloved version of "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas." For the confused, uninitiated, or hermetically-sealed, here it is (I dare not click it more than absolutely necessary to make my point):
At this point you're probably thinking, "But that song is a staple of Christmas time! Bing Crosby's soothing baritone is where I derive a plurality of my holiday cheer!" You're not wrong about sweet old Bing (at least sans wife beating). His voice, along with Dean Martin's, Gene Autry's, and Nat King Cole's are nothing short of gifts, and I'd like to join you in being grateful that they lent them most memorably to our winter festivities. In fact, I think their voices are the antithesis to the hellish screeches I'm referring to, which is, in short everything surrounding Bing's voice in that song.
The high pitched, trilling flutes, the whining violin scale downs, the ever in-your-face jingle bells, the cooing repetitions of what I can only assume are poodle skirt-clad backup singers. This is the common motif, it seems, of the Christmas music mass production facility that I assume the 50's were. These classic songs and their classic harpy-centric instrumentation and arrangement are an inescapable part of being an American at Christmastime. Some may love them. Admittedly, I never lived through the 50's (not that I would have, had I been born then) so for me these songs and their style aren't laced with nostalgia the way they might be for my parents. No, for me they bring to mind the general, all encompassing discomfort of being over insulated for the cold outside of an overcrowded and overheated shopping mall that I'm inside of alongside throngs of over stressed people buying overpriced crap. I can't seem to mentally divorce the whining nature of decades-old contemporary Christmas music from the classic American Christmas shopping experience, which is to say misery. I knew many Christmases ago that I didn't like those songs, but it took me a long time to put my finger on why. Now I know, and consequently, so do you.
"Peace on Earth, good will to men"
I don't mean to imply that popular Christmas music is all bad. But even the enjoyable ones (or those described above, if you're a sadist) lose their luster for most people by the time December 25 actually rolls around. God help those working in retail. The reason is obvious: too much of a good thing is... actually, the saying never seemed to get this far. Even the very well written and orchestrated religious carols are pretty well burned out by the big day, but especially the ones given the 50's treatment. And if you're an average "nonreligious but not about to miss out" person like myself, it seems like once you're spent on those there's nowhere else to turn for Christmas music. Sure, you could listen to the latest greatest arrangement of one of those, say, 40 or 50 songs that you already know inside and out, but at the end of the day it's still the same song.
Thankfully for people like me, the winter solstice has existed and, more importantly, been celebrated for most of human history, and with it has come accompanying music. If you know me, you know that, more than just history, I love old stuff. Old cultures, traditions, ways of thinking, and the element that encompasses all those, old music. Truth is, humans haven't forgotten much of the Christmas music that was considered household centuries ago. It's still out there, along with plenty of much more-recent-than-you-might-think versions of it. We just don't hear it anymore, largely, I think, because we've decided we can't have Christmas without all our old favorites, and there's only so much time to spend overdosing on relatively recent nostalgia.
So off I have set, or rather, will set, in my first blog that I haven't been forced to make since sophomore year of college. My goal is to share one relatively obscure traditional Christmas song every day until Christmas. Given the nature of Christmas music of the past, most of it is religious, which even I, a dirty heathen, appreciate. It's pretty hard to study pre-industrial revolution history without giving a large chunk of credit to the church for the art that came out of those times. Not all of the songs I'm hoping to explore will be super duper old, either. Don't think that my banjo playing ass hasn't dug up some old American folk tunes written, probably, within the last century. Though I already have the bulk of my playlist compiled, I'm always open to suggestions. I'm also working on an accompanying Spotify playlist for those who might be interested in listening to some other versions of songs from here, and maybe even some honorable mentions. My hope is to be forced to read, think, and write in a way that I haven't had the opportunity to in some time. But beyond that, maybe this Christmas can have a slightly tweaked soundtrack for me (and hopefully you, dear reader) that doesn't make me want to never leave the house again without ear muffs. My first official post will be tomorrow, December 1, 2016. And awaaaay we go!
