A Scrooge about Christmas Carols?

We've all heard and probably shared complaints about how the Christmas shopping season creeps earlier and earlier, overtaking Thanksgiving, replacing Veterans' Day poppies with wreaths and Christmas trees, and even encroaching upon Halloween. Even those of us who don't get caught up in the early shopping insanity have an increasingly hard time avoiding the carol-creep as radio stations are also beginning their Christmas programming ever earlier, sometimes as soon as mid-October. It's for this reason that the following is my Christmas carol complaint number one:

It seems like nobody knows when exactly the Christmas season begins and ends. Despite what our consumer culture would insist, it does not start the day after Thanksgiving. What too few people know is that for centuries, the Church (to whom we owe the observance of Christmas in the first place) designated a period of time devoted to preparing for Christmas- the four weeks plus change we call Advent. Four weeks was plenty of time back when everything took longer. It should be plenty of time now, except for maybe the spiritual preparation, which seems of far too little importance to our current consumer culture.

But another problem is when the radio stations bring all the Christmas music programming to a screeching halt right on December 25. Hype, hype, hype, then the celebration comes to an abrupt and complete stop. Is it any wonder so many people feel down December 26th? Anyway, Bob and Doug McKenzie of Great White North fame almost got it right when they speculated on just what the twelve days of Christmas are. Christmas doesn't end on the 25th, but there's no mystery to any of the remaining days. They're quite simply the days from Christmas Day through the Feast of the Epiphany, exactly twelve days later.

But that doesn't mean Christmas even ends then. In fact, the Christmas season goes on for another few weeks, lasting a total of forty days. So go ahead and keep playing the Christmas music all the way through January and help us wind down from the celebration gradually. Just don't start it in October. If you want to get a ridiculous head start on playing festive winter music, there certainly is an abundance of non-Christmas options.

and would sound just plain silly played as such in that half of the world where Christmas falls in the summer. Heck, they don't even mention Christmas, but since they're fun winter songs, they're appropriate for all winter.

Like Christmas, Hanukkah has a definite starting point and an end point of which popular culture seems woefully ignorant. Unlike Christmas (which, as is worth repeating, is not just the one day Adam Sandler mentions), it's only for eight nights, and they don't fall at the same point in December. More often than not, Hanukkah is over before Christmas has even started. Though I find my personal favorite Hanukkah song, Ma'oz Tsur, uplifting any time of the year, it may be helpful, and it certainly won't take much effort, to check the calendar before spinning The Dreidl Song instead of assuming that Hanukkah always coincides with Christmas.

Good King Wenceslaus is about the virtues of generosity and details an event that happened on St. Stephen's Day, December 26, so it must be a Christmas song, right? Wrong. It could have happened on any stormy day, and the story would be the same. A more obvious, secular example would be The Nutcracker. The only reason why it's become a Christmas tradition is because the story happened to take place on Christmas Eve. But it could have happened on Clara's birthday or any other festive occassion and the story would have been exactly the same. (Although I can't help but think the Nutcracker would be amazingly cool if it were set on International Talk Like a Pirate Day!)

From a musicological standpoint, the two things that stick worst in my auditory craw are inappropriate arrangements and singing in any style that doesn't suit the song or the arrangement. Probably the worst case of the former is the notorious Little Drummer Boy. With words like "I played my drum for Him. I played my best for Him," and knowing what I know about drummers, I'd expect the song to be much livelier than it's usually played.

Even worse in my opinion is juxtaposing pop-style singing with songs and arrangements that call for a more classical style. When people try to make some songs, like Angels We Have Heard on High , sound pop, the result usually sounds pretty silly. And anyone who can't pronounce "Gloria in excelsis Deo" in proper Latin really shouldn't record the slaughter of such words for posterity.

From a moral/ethical standpoint, it does bother me when artists change the words to Christmas songs. It doesn't bother me when people of one religion sing the songs from other religions, but let's please acknowledge and respect the sources. The most egregious example I can think of is Fleetwood Mac's version of Silent Night. Oh, they do a beautiful job musically, but when they leave out words like "Christ, the Savior is born" and "Jesus, Lord at thy birth," that does water down the whole meaning of the song. The meaning of Christmas has been diluted far too much as it is without the help of a group I otherwise like.

Now that my gripes about the ill-treatment and overplaying of seasonal music has been expressed, I feel like I can more fully appreciate the best in Christmas music, even The Little Drummer Boy- if it comes with a blazing drum solo!