December 28, 2020
Monrovia, California
For a long time I couldn't quite put my finger on why I dislike Christmas songs so much. I think it was difficult because it was one of those "let me count the ways" deals. There are so many reasons.
First off, there's the fact that they start playing them over the loudspeakers in stores by no later than Thanksgiving, and more and more, even before that. Halloween, really, marks the beginning of the Christmas season now, from a commercial standpoint, and one is likely to begin to hear a loop of Christmas songs at just about every store one goes into from November onward. Occasionally I will ask a clerk whether he or she gets tired of listening to these songs all day long, day after day, and since I ask it in a sort of confidential, friendly, commiserating way, I expect to hear what I want to hear. I want them to say, "Man, you have no fucking idea how maddening it is to listen to that shit over and over for two solid months." Instead, more often than not, they'll say, "No, I really sort of like the music," or "It's okay, because it helps me get into the holiday spirit," or "Actually, I kind of tune them out." That latter one I can understand and admire, especially because I'm not sure I'd be able to do that. The other reasons are downright puzzling, and although it does occur to me that they might be expressing their appreciation for Christmas music out of a sense of self-preservation (meaning that they're afraid to speak their minds to a customer because I might tell management), I am often afraid that they are telling the truth, and that they really do like the endless Christmas music, which means that they're on a wavelength so different from mine that we might as well be from different species.
At any rate, I find Christmas music to be depressing, or boring, or ridiculous, or a combination of those things. First, there are the secular ones, the Johnny Mathis/Andy Williams/Nat King Cole/Mel Torme/Bing Crosby-type songs. "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" is a big offender with the crooner set, along with "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas." And of course "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is right up there, along with "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" and "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." Then there are the children's Christmas songs, like "Frosty the Snowman" and "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." All these songs are shallow and maudlin and covered by one singer after another, old and new--from the aforementioned tunemeisters of our parents' generation to Elvis to Bruce Springsteen to Beyonce to Christ knows who else, as if each different person who sings them can somehow infuse them with something new, when they cannot, and just make fools of themselves over essentially foolish songs. I swear, I wouldn't be surprised if Snoop Dogg did a version of "Here Comes Santa Claus" (and come to think of it, he might have done so). As pieces of music, whatever initial zing all these songs might have had as, let's say, dance interlude numbers in a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, or Bing Crosby singles, or cartoon soundtracks, has been lost to the ages. Their initial limited appeal has evaporated like the oomph "Over There" must have had back during World War One, or "John Brown's Body" during the Civil War.
So much for the secular songs. And now maybe you're thinking, Aha! he's a purist--he only likes religious Christmas songs, since Christmas is, or once was, a religious holiday. No my friends, there you'd be wrong as hell. I don't like religious Christmas carols either, whether they're sung sanctimoniously by those same people I mentioned in the previous paragraph or by little kids standing in the snow or by hardworking, clean-shaven Norman Rockwell types standing up in a New England church or by, well, anybody. In fact, I dislike religious Christmas songs even more, because they're supposed to have more meaning than the secular ones. They're all about how the world was hopelessly fucked up until, lo and behold, a little baby was born in a barn in the Middle East, and ever since then everything's been SO much better. Oh yeah, big improvement. How's that working out for you, earthlings?
So yeah, the son of God was born, as weirdly idiotic as that sounds. I guess nothing proves the idea that man created God in his own image more than the utterly anthropomorphic way we describe the doings of the infinitely divine and powerful. Having a son, sacrificing a son, being a pissed-off dad, being a vengeful and jealous narcissist, etc. Mind you, the concept of a god impregnating an earth woman and having a child I do understand, because I am an educated person, and since it comes straight out of Greco-Roman mythology, where people and gods were much more interactive with one another, and it most assuredly had antecedents going much farther back than the Greeks and the Romans. But the operative word there is mythology, isn't it? Just So Stories. How the camel got its hump, and all that. And yet--and yet--and yet, against all reason, at least a couple of billion people on this planet--many dozen times the number of ninnies who voted for Donald Trump last month, and a far greater percentage of humans than has any right to think so--actually professes to believe that the creator of the universe had a kid, just like the average absentee father down the block. And apparently only one child, at that, which is even more mystifying to me. What'd he do after that, get a vasectomy? But, there it is. Ask the average guy on the street in Cincinnati or Mexico City or Warsaw whether he believes that Zeus came down to Leda in the form of a swan, fucked her, and that she gave birth to Helen of Troy, and he'd probably walk away shaking his head. But ask the same person if he believes that God came to the Virgin Mary as a dove and knocked her up with Jesus Christ, and he'd say, yeah, sure, of course. That did happen. That, my friends, is a real head-scratcher, and that, as the preachers tell us, year in and year out, is the True Meaning of Christmas.
I think my dislike of Christmas songs might all go back to my own father, who was a Presbyterian minister. Aha! You're saying again. So that's it! Some sort of father/religious rebellion deal. Nope, not at all. My dad was a good minister to his several congregations throughout his career, preaching almost every Sunday, visiting the sick, counseling troubled parishioners, baptizing babies, marrying couples, burying the dead, and comforting their survivors. All the stuff you'd expect a clergyman to do. And he did a pretty good job of it, from what I've been told. He was a traditionalist, in that he observed the two major Christian holidays--Christmas and Easter--and led a good steady bunch of ordinary folks in the obligatory weekly get togethers to, rather formally, praise God and look for ways to be better people. Being a Presbyterian, he wasn't particularly evangelical, as that term is used today. Though he did talk about Jesus quite a bit (from the pulpit, not at home), he didn't demand that people be washed in the blood, or personally testify to the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, or try to convert their fellow men. In fact, he looked down on that stuff. The demands he placed on his congregations, if you can even call them demands, were pretty simple: come to church regularly, give enough money to keep things going and to do good in the community and the world, participate as lay persons in the workings of the church, and have a good time. He was a fixture in the community, trying never to alienate anyone with his theological positions. He liked to hang around town with some of the local merchants, listening to or telling the occasional off-color joke (although his best dirty jokes came from his fellow ministers at their monthly get togethers), steering clear of politics outside our home, and just generally "being there."
The Presbyterian denomination is a part of the so-called Reformed, or Calvinist, branch of Protestantism. Some of its ancestors in this country included the French Huguenots, the Dutch Reformed folks who settled New Amsterdam, and, perhaps most prominently, the Puritans, who later morphed into the Congregationalists, now know as the United Church of Christ. Today the most liberal branches of Calvinism are the aforementioned Congregationalists and to an increasing degree the Presbyterians. Despite their rather strait-laced ancestors, Presbyterians are likely to condone, and even welcome, gay marriage, strong social consciousness, and other elements of "inclusiveness." The more conservative branches of Calvinism include the various Reformed Churches--particularly the Christian Reformed Church--and some even more recondite groups like the Netherlands Reformed Church. These remain fundamentalist in their scriptural teachings, exclusive, and in some cases, downright cult-like. Needless to say, they decry the way the world is going to hell in a handbasket today, which is code for the fact that they think the Republicans are correct and the Democrats are wrong.
All Calvinist denominations derive their theological underpinnings, like Protestants generally, from the rejection of the Pope as the head of the church. In addition, the Calvinists reject the idea of a hierarchical episcopal clergy (in other words, no bishops), and absolutely abhor the idea that the body of Christ is present in the eucharist, or anywhere else outside of heaven. They do, however, cling to the idea of infant baptism, like their Roman Catholic brethren, which separates them from the many groups that go by the name Baptist. And the Calvinists theoretically emphasize predestination over free will, although trying to explain that is far beyond the scope of this posting, and frankly more in the realm of speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Furthermore, they don't really seem, in the modern era at least, to give much of a damn about these theological niceties.
One thing Presbyterians, or at least my father, cared about when I was growing up, was people being part of the congregation, and not just part-timers. Oh sure, he was glad to see you even if you came only a few times a year, but he really liked the regulars, and was likely to make jokes at home about the once-a-year types. I suspect that pretty much all clergymen, of all denominations, feel the same way. The idea of there being just a couple of Holy Days of Obligation, like Christmas and Easter, when the faithful absolutely had to go to church, was more or less anathema to him, as smacking too much of Catholicism. Every Sunday was a day of obligation, more like the way the Jews view the sabbath. It was perhaps for this reason, then, that he regarded both Christmas and Easter as sort of religious amateur hours, although he didn't mind the extra cash that came in the collection plates on these occasions. Easter, of course, was always on Sunday, and was a good excuse to trot out the annual He Is Risen sermon, and at Christmastime there was The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us sermon. But he didn't believe in Christmas Eve services, and unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday, he didn't ever have a service on that day either. Christmas, he said, was a time to stay home with the family. And once Christmas and Easter were out of the way, it was back to business as usual, which I could always tell made him much more comfortable. We got our Christmas tree on December 21st, which was my parents' wedding anniversary, put up the usual lights, and did our little comparatively modest Christmas morning thing (unless, God forbid, Christmas was on Sunday, in which case we had to wait until afternoon), and had that tree out of the living room by New Year's Day.
Which brings me back to Christmas songs. From about the beginning of December on, my father knew there pretty much had to be a Christmas hymn at every Sunday service ("O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," etc.), but I don't think he was all charged up about it. And maybe on the Sunday after Christmas there would be "We Three Kings of Orient Are." And then, BAM. Christmas's ass was over, baby, and it was back to the standards, which for Presbyterians were mostly Psalms set to music. But at home? I don't remember much of anything in the way of Christmas songs. (Think of it this way. If your father was an insurance salesman, do you think he'd get a kick out of watching commercials for insurance? Probably not.) Maybe on Christmas Eve or Christmas day there would be some selections from Handel's Messiah on the record player, or Mahalia Jackson. But Johnny Mathis or Perry Como or Der Bingle? No fucking way. Chestnuts roasting? Making a snowman and dressing him up like Parson Brown? Sheeeeit. Not only were those songs profane, but also profoundly irrelevant. To sing an actual, bona fide Christmas carol, about the birth of the Christ child, you had to be an actual, bona fide Christian, which both my parents knew Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra most decidedly were not.
So today, despite the fact that I am a complete and utter apostate, in the fast lane of the highway to hell, I retain within me what I firmly believe to be my clergyman father's contempt for all secular Christmas songs combined with his impatience about the religious ones. What it adds up to for me is a rejection of it all.
And don't even get me started on Easter. Oy.
