Musa Nativitatis
Christmas always delights and appalls me simultaneously, though my ideas about many things have usually changed by the time another year cycles by. Affairs are no different this year, but something in particular -- for once, not something wholly negative -- has seized my attention. This something is the Christmas Muse.
The Christmas Muse is an odd lady. Within her purvey are surely the most recognizeable tunes, ditties, and holy hymns in the world -- anyone who does not recognize "O Holy Night" or "Jingle Bells" is unhealthily detached from society. I also used to say that anyone who didn't enjoy Christmas music was touched in the head; since then, however, I've run into a good many who don't like the stuff one bit.
It's not as though they don't have their reasons: indeed, the Christmas Muse has in her repetoire some pretty miserable tripe, and even the better ones have been beaten into a sort of milky pallor by an endless stream of hack tunemongers and advertisers. All this leads me to wonder just why the designation "Christmas song" has preserved such odd anachronisms that would never have survived on their own. For instance, I was listening to "Jingle Bells" the other day and realized that it was nothing more than a 19th century pop song, and not a terribly accomplished one at that. Such is the case with more modern "carols," such as the woozy, hopelessly dated offerings from the likes of Mel Torme and Johnny Marks.
So, what is the purport of all this? I think it must simply have to do with the amazingly deep-rooted, quasi-Mediaeval resonance of the single holy day which we in America still significantly observe. Of course the holiday has been ravaged by Madison Avenue heathens; of course St. Nicholas is reduced to a hip-hop dancing geriatric, telling us that anything we want can be found at Circuit City. Such is life in a Postmodern republic. Even so, the sacred events which all this stuff commemorates are, somewhere, still manifest to average Americans -- and therefore, even the transient fluff that surrounds it takes on a sort of sacral aura, or at least is found more important than other commercial tripe. Anything with the power to make perennial favourites out of vapid pop jingles, to withstand the onslaught of wire-frame reindeer with electric revolving heads, and to bring "O Holy Night" preserved through the myriad murder attempts of every warbling tenor-atrocity of the century, deserves some sort of respect from anyone. Hail the Christmas Muse.
The Christmas Muse is an odd lady. Within her purvey are surely the most recognizeable tunes, ditties, and holy hymns in the world -- anyone who does not recognize "O Holy Night" or "Jingle Bells" is unhealthily detached from society. I also used to say that anyone who didn't enjoy Christmas music was touched in the head; since then, however, I've run into a good many who don't like the stuff one bit.
It's not as though they don't have their reasons: indeed, the Christmas Muse has in her repetoire some pretty miserable tripe, and even the better ones have been beaten into a sort of milky pallor by an endless stream of hack tunemongers and advertisers. All this leads me to wonder just why the designation "Christmas song" has preserved such odd anachronisms that would never have survived on their own. For instance, I was listening to "Jingle Bells" the other day and realized that it was nothing more than a 19th century pop song, and not a terribly accomplished one at that. Such is the case with more modern "carols," such as the woozy, hopelessly dated offerings from the likes of Mel Torme and Johnny Marks.
So, what is the purport of all this? I think it must simply have to do with the amazingly deep-rooted, quasi-Mediaeval resonance of the single holy day which we in America still significantly observe. Of course the holiday has been ravaged by Madison Avenue heathens; of course St. Nicholas is reduced to a hip-hop dancing geriatric, telling us that anything we want can be found at Circuit City. Such is life in a Postmodern republic. Even so, the sacred events which all this stuff commemorates are, somewhere, still manifest to average Americans -- and therefore, even the transient fluff that surrounds it takes on a sort of sacral aura, or at least is found more important than other commercial tripe. Anything with the power to make perennial favourites out of vapid pop jingles, to withstand the onslaught of wire-frame reindeer with electric revolving heads, and to bring "O Holy Night" preserved through the myriad murder attempts of every warbling tenor-atrocity of the century, deserves some sort of respect from anyone. Hail the Christmas Muse.
posted by Robert C. Hamilton at 5:37 PM
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