This gets a large reaction at PJ media and elsewhere. People generally agree on the list with a few exceptions for songs they actually like.
10. Merry Christmas Baby, Johnny Moore's Three Blazers
9.) Wonderful Christmastime, Paul McCartney
8.) Little Drummer Boy, Harry Simeone Chorale
7.) Jingle Bells, Barbra Streisand
6.) Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas, John Denver
5.) Happy Xmas (War is Over), John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Plastic Onion band
4.) Deck the Halls, Mannheim Steamroller
3.) Blue Christmas, Porky Pig / Seymour Swine
2.) Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, Elmo & Patsy
1.) The Christmas Shoes, New Song
Several of these I hadn't heard before this. How does that even happen? Luck. Oversight. Not paying attention. Maybe I was too poor to have a radio. Desperately poor. So poor that our Christmas presents were usually found objects, painted stones, and sticks with google eyes glued onto them. Wrote a Christmas song about it. Wanna hear it? Okay, goes like this ...
One commenter put a video of Little Drummer Boy with serious drumming.
Another commenter put up an hilarious video of Tim Hawkins discussing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" His church put him a production at age six in which he had one line and blew it. He sang, "A child, a child, sleeping in the night with a tail as big as a kite."
Another commenter put up a video he likes, Mary, Did You Know, by Pentatonix.
I instantly love this song done this way. I think it's extraordinary. The voices are particularly good.
But other commenters there at PJ Media and on YouTube and elsewhere do not like this song. They find the idea of Mary not knowing that her baby is God to be offensive. They know their scripture and this song offends them so much they cannot enjoy it. It is rejected.
I love how the concluding line to each verse contrasts a commonplace blessing with the unbelievable sacred.
And then the contrast grows.
This child that you delivered ...... will soon deliver youThat's fantastic. It's what caused me to listen.
When you kiss your little baby ........ you kiss the face of God
That sleeping child you're holding ...... is the great I AM
But then,
Oooohh... I hate that song.
The answer is yes, she did know. The angel gave her the terms and conditions, and she agreed to them.
There are 2000 years of more theologically and musically competent Christmas hymns. Why must this one be the only one that ever gets featured?Answered by,
Mary also treasured up these things, pondering them in her heart. The song doesn't say she doesn't know, it just meditates on how much she knows.Elsewhere, a comment on Lucianne.
Did you ever agree to something, understanding all the words, but not seeing all the implications? Jesus told his disciples about just the resurrection but they missed it. After 2000 years of intense debate, we're still fuzzy on the details. Do you expect more from a sheltered, 14-yr-old girl?
"Yes, she did know" is the short, incomplete, and uninteresting answer.
No argument about #1 = absolute dreck, because death and poverty always bring out the Yuletide Spirit. But the other one that drives me nuts, but didn´t make the list, is "Mary Did You Know?" I don´t know who wrote it, but the moron obviously had never read the Bible. She knew! Which makes the entire song pointless and moot.Annunciation:
Luke 1:26-38
13 comments:
Most of those, at least the ones I've heard, aren't all that bad, excluding Drummer Boy and anything Beatles, in comparison with the one by the most overrated country star and failed blues singer who must have set out to make the most intentionally depressing Christmas song of all time.
Yes, friends, I'm talking about that Kennedy era bit of virtue signalling, Willie Nelson's Pretty Paper, especially when nasally intoned by the composer. And even a Roy Orbison cover couldn't make it sound any better.
This child that you delivered ...... will soon deliver you
When you kiss your little baby ........ you kiss the face of God
That sleeping child you're holding ...... is the great I AM
It makes sense of Christianity as a poeticization of ethics. What you're called on to do for another, the felt call on you, is makes you you and unique and irreplaceable.
The adult Jesus takes on the suffering of the world. Who takes on the suffering of others if not the person who says "I"? Everybody is the messiah.
Same lesson different age.
#5 grates on my nerves like no other song. I will sometimes listen to radio Christmas pop songs, and that one makes the rounds. My finger cannot reach the off button fast enough.
What's that song with ha-ra-ha-ha-ha in it? I like that one.
You know what bothers me about this time of the year, with music? My favorite radio station WEVR River Falls WI starts playing Christmas music at 9 am on Thanksgiving Day, and will not stop playing it until some time in January when the Epiphany occurs. Too much already!
Medusa, the other one by Ono is So This Is Christmas. Can't imagine how it didn't make the list.
He must have been stuffing his mouth with doughnuts when he did that one.
AllenS said...
You know what bothers me about this time of the year, with music? My favorite radio station WEVR River Falls WI starts playing Christmas music at 9 am on Thanksgiving Day, and will not stop playing it until some time in January when the Epiphany occurs. Too much already!
In the old days, that was the season, at least to Xmas. They go to Epiphany for our Hispanic brethren.
It used to be they'd start around Advent with a couple of seculars and build up slowly. But I agree, wall-to-wall the second Turkey is over is a bit much.
I think they're trying to take the fun out of it.
The radio stations only play the pop tunes and avoid just about anything with a religious reference. This cuts out the majority of the music out there. Several years ago I started copying Christmas CDs from the public library and put them on a usb stick. English, German, Polish and French Carols, Gregorian chants, Medieval Christmas music, The Nutcracker suite, Salvation Army Brass Bands, etc. I got almost 30 albums on one 4.7GB stick. I plug it into the car radio and have music throughout the holidays.
(Chorus's lines)
Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
Dass er unser sich erbarm,
Und in dem Himmel mache reich,
Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich.
https://youtu.be/vXNX6Ulzvn0?t=1005
nice phrasing in German, rhymes, text by Martin Luther.
Mary knew.
It's still too early to be playing Christmas music. I like to enjoy Christmas music during Christmas season, not be sick of it when Christmas begins.
Hard to get into the Christmas season, when on the radio this appears: Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Here's an old tune about a guy getting a Christmas card from a hooker. She told him she'd cleaned up her life and things were going great but towards the end of the song she admitted she was lying and she was in jail. Not a Christmas song really but in a way it is.
Tom Waits warning for Sixty Grit and windbag and maybe everyone for all I know.
Thanks Dad Bones. No warning needed for me. I attended a Wait's concert when I was in college and experienced him as confounding and inviting then.
In recent years, finding and listening to his "You Can Never Hold Back Spring" has helped me through some dark winters; and this one, not heard before, captures my heart. It contains the essence of brokenness and hope, and conveys the lies and truth we all carry along with a spark of creativity and light.
Thanks back atcha MamaM. I like the way you put it, "contains the essence of brokenness and hope".
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