My daughter has the Pandora ap working in the living room. It is on a Christmas channel and I am hearing songs I had never heard before. After listening once I can see why. The great voice of Bing Crosby recorded a lot more than White Christmas. The blessing is that most of the songs died a natural death.
As I was feeding the toddler and listening to the music my mind went on a tangent. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy a conversation in which one side consists of empty shrieks and nonsense syllables. I have had conversation with progressives and survived without violence. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy making faces and acting excited when she gets the spoon in her mouth without dumping the oatmeal in her lap. There are situations though that make it possible for even this male mind to multi-task.
I was giving 3/4 of my mind to listening to the words and I realized that the non-hits of Bing Crosby have a lot in common with the majority of modern secular Christmas music. One thing I noticed is that you could take the word Christmas that is inserted on some kind of ratio and replace it with another word, say Tuesday, and the song would have just as much meaning and staying power as it does as a Christmas song. I recently enjoyed an old post by the Babylon Bee that has the exchange going the opposite way as Justin Bieber replaces “baby” with “Jesus”.
https://babylonbee.com/news/praise-the-lord-justin-bieber-just-retroactively-inserted-the-word-jesus-into-his-entire-catalog-and-this-is-everything
Most modern Christmas songs reject any possible reference to the real catalyst for Christmas and become expressions of a desire to express themselves sexually. In modern productions you hear about the breaking of a heart instead of the breaking of the power of sin. The result desired is a one night stand as opposed to the eternal relationship promised by Christmas.
I am a supporter of free enterprise so I have no problem with everyone who has every recorded a song producing a Christmas album filled with gruel. I do have a problem with it being the only stuff that seems to be broadcast any more. I like White Christmas and Jinglebell Rock but they are simply enjoyable, not meaningful. They do not change the world and did not establish the season.
Merry Christmas and long live redeeming Christmas music.
homo unius libri
Besides, "Christmas" was really the first day of Nisan.
ReplyDeleteHad to Google that one. When you are picking an arbitrary date that might be a good one. I think I heard a preacher say that Advent is the beginning of the church year.
ReplyDeleteGrace and peace