One final Christmasy post for the season

On a social media site that shall be nameless, another participant asked me what are my three favorite Christmas songs.

I answered quickly, without over-thinking it, but while trying to show some range among the many different kinds of song, and eras of song-writing, in the genre. I answered:

Snoopy's Christmas (1967)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas (1944)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day (1863/1956).

"I heard the bells..." has two dates on this modest list because it began life as a poem by Longfellow. When Johnny Marks composed the tune most of us have heard, so that Bing Crosby could sing this poem to the world, Crosby cracked wise. "I see you've finally gotten yourself a decent lyricist, Johnny."

Anyway: I have since been thinking too much about my list of three. In the lyrics of none of them does one find any reference either to Santa or to Jesus. My list avoid both commercialism and specifics of faith.

Two out of my three choices involve a rather secular notion of Christmas -- as by old convention a good time for truces in the midst of conflicts, or as a good time to look forward with hope to the future. There is some implication in each of these two that there are, at least for many celebrants, spiritual reasons for this timing. But nothing doctrinal.

The Marks' masterpiece with his lyricist Longfellow is the least secular. Indeed, it is an explicit contemplation of the question of theodicy: does God allow evil, such as slavery or the vast slaughter of a war, for mysterious reasons of His own, or is He merely (and perhaps merely at present) incapable of avoiding it? The question goes unanswered, but the contemplation ends with a re-affirmation of faith. Faith is untroubled by carnage insofar as it can focus on an unspecified future (the wrong shall fail....)

I am happy to note that none of my three favorite Christmas songs is particularly helpful for toy merchants. Not only do they avoid Santa but each in its own way accepts melancholy. Two of them are explicitly set during wartime, after all.

With regard to "Merry little Christmas," I should specify that I have in mind the Judy Garland version, not the Frank Sinatra melancholia-free reworking. Garland sang the song (lyrics by Hugh Martin) with the words "until then we're bound to muddle through somehow" in there. Referring that is, to the troubles of this Christmas and hopes/expectations for a better future Christmas. Again: the wrong shall fail. The right prevail. We'll just have to muddle through until then.

Sinatra had that line changed to "hang a shining star upon the highest bough" before he would grace the song with his voice. That just strikes me as a travesty.

I think there are lessons here about my religiosity in general, but I am not the one to unfold them. Three King's Day is behind us now, and Christmas songs are fading into memory for months to come.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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