Wednesday December 23, 2009
Unholy Christmas carols
By Jim Taylor
At our congregation, during the Sundays preceding Christmas, we usually take 15 minutes or so to sing Christmas carols before the more serious part of the service starts.
Last Sunday, the sing-along leader included “Jingle Bells.”
“Why not?” she explained to the choir. “Christmas is about joy. Why can’t we sing some traditional songs that give us joy, even if they don’t mention God or Jesus?”
Why not indeed?
Granted, a certain number of the secular Christmas songs focus on the commercial side of Christmas – such as Eartha Kitt’s sultry “Santa Baby.”
But so did some historic songs. The “Twelve Days of Christmas” may have contained hidden religious symbolism, but it also celebrated a certain lust for luxuries far beyond the means of most singers.
Other secular songs deal mainly with the winter season. “Walkin’ in our Winter Wonderland” and “Let it Snow” have more to do with hormonal urges than with glad tidings of peace and goodwill.
And many of the Santa songs are simply morality messages set to music – substituting a red-suited judge who keeps annotated lists for an almighty overseer who “knows if you’ve been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake…”
But “Silver Bells” is a beautiful melody that belongs in any Christmas sing-along. “Scarlet Ribbons,” popularized by Harry Belafonte so long ago, describes a father’s aching love for his daughter. “White Christmas” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas” speak of the yearning we all experience for friends and family.
Singing whole-heartedly
Now, I happen to love the religious Christmas carols. I get joy from belting out “Adeste Fidelis” – in Latin, of course – or launching into four-part harmony on the chorus of “Angels We Have Heard on High”.
But “Joy to the World” doesn’t sound particularly joyful when sung half-heartedly by people afraid of opening their mouths.
Don’t people sing for fun anymore? I see people walking around with earphones plugged into their ears, playing canned music off an iPod or a Walkman. Sometimes they hum along tunelessly; more often, they let paid performers make music for them.
Singing has become a lost art.
No wonder people are afraid to open their mouths in church.
I’d much rather have people singing vigorously than restraining themselves because they fear sounding less than perfect.
Back when Sunday schools still had large enrolments, I recall trying to get 40 children to sing “Away in a Manger.” It sounded pathetic.
“Okay,” I asked, “what would you like to sing?”
“Rudolph!” someone called.
Without piano, without leadership, without books, they launched into “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” enthusiastically enough to rattle the windows.
I don’t consider that sacrilegious. I suspect that if Jesus himself were part of that children’s group, he’d rather sing “Rudolph” lustily than limp through “We Three Kings.”
We don’t offer praise by sounding dispirited and disheartened. If “Jingle Bells” moves us to sing whole-heartedly, and the “Huron Carol” or “Bleak Midwinter” do not, then by all means let’s include some secular carols in our sing-alongs.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
In response to last week’s column, about humans acting like raccoons, Bob Stoddard drew my attention to the writings of Lowen Kruse, a retired Methodist pastor, and Jim Henderschedt did the same for the writings of Fr. Ed Hayes, Roman Catholic. You can probably find them by Googling.
I got no specific comments about the Raccoon column, but Steve Roney wanted to respond to Dave de Bourcier’s musings, about the column the week before, in whcih I wondered whether every child had the potential of being born as a Messiah. (There, is that perfectly clear?)
“This is the Buddhist teaching,” Steve noted, that “every child born has the potential to become the world Buddha, Maitreya. Has this made the Buddhist would more compassionate than the Christian over the past two millenia?
“I don’t necessarily want to argue that the Buddhist world has been any less compassionate than the Christian over the past two thousand years, but I would certainly argue it has been no more so.”
If I may be permitted my own musings on that question, I think two factors enter into any such comparison.
a) how much we actually know about the other culture, be it Buddhism, Islam, Baha’i, whatever:
b) whether we compare the best with the best, or the best with the worst, or, perhaps, the worst with the worst.
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About My Books
Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — as collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.
- Everyday God: Insights from the Ordinary
- Worlds in One
- Chance
- Seeing the Mystery: Exploring Christian Faith through the Eyes of Artists,
- Surviving Death
- Everyday Psalms
- Everyday Parables
- Letters to Stephen
- A New Understanding of Virtue and Vice
- Precious Days and Practical Love: Caring for an Aging Parent
- John for Beginners
- Spirituality of Pets
(1981 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1985, JT only)
(1989, JT only)
(1990, with William S. Taylor, JT only)
(1993, JT only)
(1994 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1995 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1996, WLB, $17.95)
(1997, WLB, $19.95)
(1999, WLB, $19.95)
(2001, WLB, $11.95)
(2006, WLB, $39)
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For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild’s United Online site,
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- Alva Wood’s satiric stories about small town attitudes and bumbling bureaucrats are not particularly religious, but good fun anyway; write [email protected] to get onto her mailing list.
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