Editor's note: This post is a follow-up to a previous post about Christmas music.
I recently listened to a holiday installment of one of my favorite podcasts, All Songs Considered, where each guest brought in a few favorite Christmas songs to play for each other and the listeners. All Songs Considered usually traffics in the kind of elitist and esoteric music that appeals to overeducated hipsters like myself, and the initial Christmas selections on the podcast reflected that bias. However, fairly early on in the proceedings one of the guests on the show made a most unexpected selection:
This song was greeted by huge groans from all the other guests on the podcast*, and from me too, listening in my car. But after we all suffered through the song, the guy who chose it offered an interesting apology for his selection. He said that oftentimes during the holidays we often find ourselves at gatherings where we're fully expecting to have awkward meetings with certain acquaintances or family members, but we attend just the same because it just wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't see them. Likewise, he argued, there may be a lot of Christmas music that bugs us, but it just wouldn't feel like Christmas without it.
That reasoning really resonated for me, and I feel like since then I've had more of an open mind towards mainstream Christmas music. Yes, Wham! or Mannheim Steamroller, for example, drive me crazy, but it just wouldn't seem like Christmas without them.
* I liked their dissection of the lyrics of "Last Christmas" - George Michael gave his heart to someone and then the recipient gave George Michael's heart away to someone else? That's awkward - does George Michael even know who has his heart anymore? Does the new owner of the heart realize that it originally belonged to George Michael**?
** All this talk of George Michael makes me think of Arrested Development.
P.S. - Congratulations to Cookie Monster for breaking onto SNL last week. There was a much bigger cheer for him than there was when real host Jeff Bridges came out (not that there's anything wrong with Jeff Bridges - I'm looking forward to the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit), so let's hope Cookie Monster can parlay this appearance into a full hosting gig.
14 years ago
2 comments:
I'm concerned that you just referred to yourself as a hipster.
My brother, sister-in-law, and I were sort of talking about this a couple weeks ago. My sister-in-law had a mix CD playing all the Christmas music she had grown up with. To me it was that kind of "drives me crazy" Christmas music, but to her it wouldn't have been Christmas without it. And I couldn't complain because my brother and I came to the easy consensus that, for us, Christmas would just not be Christmas without Mannhein Steamroller. That's what our family listened to way back when, and to be perfectly honest, there's a part of me that feels like Christmas is Mannheim Steamroller. I mean, in addition to family and the spirit of giving and, you know, the birth of Christ...
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