So Few Christmas Songs, and so much Confusion

Some people would say it was just as well, but when Christmas songs always manage to easily uplift people so effortlessly, why do people not play them year around. The reason could be that the Christmas song repertoire is not a particularly voluminous one. Any major star releasing an album of Christmas material, like, say, Mariah Carey or Elvis or Willie Nelson, is bound to pick a bunch of familiar Christmas material in there, and only use a few original numbers to round it out with. You can always count on being treated to the singer's reinterpretation of Deck the Halls, or Silent Night. Elvis does his familiar, clipped, devil-may-care attitude, Mariah coos those carols in a way that makes you just want to dissolve, and Willie Nelson has the careless Southern drawl that is just irresistible. Should one complain that Christmas songs are just repeated over and over no matter how many years pass? Or that there seem to be no new classics?

The problem isn’t so abstract when you happen to be put in charge of the Christmas songs to play at a party at home or at work. The prognosis isn’t good if you are in that situation and you need to please all who show up; but with good taste and restraint, it can still be done. Perhaps the trouble is the way people spend freely around Christmas and the shops are flooded with cheap productions rushed out to market. Avoiding novelty Christmas songs is a certain way to keep a reveling group happy. The evergreens by Elvis, songs like Charlie Brown Christmas and the Drummer Boy are must-haves, but so are Christmas releases by major artists.

It could be a sign of the times, but there are Chrismas carol troubles brewing at schools around the country over a choice of secular Christmas songs to have children sing at school this year. California is offering a vote on a proposal that the law be repealed that religion not be brought into schools in the form of Christmas carols during the holidays. People who support the measure feel that having children sing Christmas songs during the holidays is an American tradition that children must not be deprived of. Opponents see this as a step onto a slippery slope of compromised separation of religion and education.

Bringing Christmas songs into the schools could be quite a way away. The petitions need to pile up to about a half million before the motion is taken up. Keeping the church out of the schoolhouse has never really caught on elsewhere in the developed world. There's just been a lawsuit launched in the European Parliament against the practice in Italy of displaying a cross in classrooms. And the local population does not seem to understand what could possibly be wrong with a little love for God brought in as part of a well-rounded education.