Now don’t get me wrong . . . I have nothing against Christmas (it’s my favorite holiday), or against Christmas music for that matter – I started practicing several of the tunes on my whistle back in July. BUT, Friday evening a local radio station began playing Christmas music around the clock and my 11 year old son has every radio in the house turned on and tuned in to that station. Right now I’m listening to Burl Ives singing, “It’s a holly, jolly Christmas . . .” I love the way Burl sings that song . . . it makes me all tingly. HOWEVER, let’s face it, folks, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. It’s a little early, in my book, for nonstop Christmas music which will continue until January 1st. I say let’s wait until Santa Claus’ float moves past the tv screen in the Macy’s Parade before we start thinking about Christmas.
My son says that he disagrees and wants to know how you people feel about this topic.
Will O’Ban
PS: I would have agreed with him when I was 11, but the Christmas season didn’t start back in those days until the day after Thanksgiving.
Interesting. I was in Giant (groceries) with my 14 yr old this afternoon, and right where seasonal items are displayed they had a boombox going…I think it played that same Burl Ives number 3 or 4 times before we finished and left. I don’t generally play Christmas music at home (cds, that is, I may play it on piano or whistle in June!) until a week or two into December.
Yesterday I was part of a chorus for my wife & daughter’s school Holiday Fair. Bloomfield would have had a good laugh hearing me stumble through “Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen” . What a lovely and poignant melody! There are so many cool seasonal songs and the season is so very short I don’t mind starting this early.
I’m sort of a Christmas music snob though. I don’t much care for the mainstream Xmas songs; Jingle Bell Rock, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc. I especially disdain Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer with it’s message of (to paraphrase and augment);
“Now all the reindeer loved him
Because he had some social standing
Before that he was just some stupid-physically-different-git
And it was okay to make fun of him"
Well…alright it doesn’t rhyme and I screwed up the meter but, hey…AFAIC, the lesson is someone different is fair game for abuse unless they hold a position/office of high regard. :roll:
Anyhow, I like a good deal of the “Nowell, Sing We Clear” type of material. Stuff out of the Oxford Book of Carols, Wassail songs (not that one called “The Wassail Song” ), and Wren songs. Great fun to sing and harmonize with.
I’ve always been amazed at how early it starts - this year, the X-Mas stuff was going up at our Wal-Mart before the Halloween stuff!! I’m not kidding! I’ve sort of become numb to it…
[quote=“Feadan”]Yesterday I was part of a chorus for my wife & daughter’s school Holiday Fair. Bloomfield would have had a good laugh hearing me stumble through “Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen” . What a lovely and poignant melody!
Chris Norman does a really KILLER version of that tune on either one of his solo albums, or with the Baltimore Consort. It’s a theme and variations sort of like the Renaissance composer Van Eyck might have done. It starts off with the simple lovely melody and each succesive repetition gets more and more comples until by the end he’s really flying.
I just checked, and this tune is on the Baltimore Consort album “Bright Day Star” which is a wonderful collection of Renaissance and older Christmas music. Most of the commercial stuff makes my flesh crawl, but this whole album is glorious.
I have no problems with it. What is the proposed solution? Passing some kind of law against Christmas items going on display before such-and-such a date? Banning Christmas music on the radio before a certain date? To me, it is simple supply and demand. Most retail stores do over half their annual business during the holiday season It is good practical common sense to try and stretched out a bit, instead of trying to cram it all into three weeks in December.
I am one that plans ahead. I have already started accumulating Christmas gifts and have already bought my cards to send out. I believe that good, thoughtful gifts usually do not fall off trees (though it does happen).
Bill, I am not advocating some law establishing when such things can occur. I certainly never intended for my post to be taken to that kind of extreme. Perhaps you just misunderstood what I was trying to say. My point was that it would be nice to take things one holiday at a time. Before being inundated with nonstop Christmas music, why can’t we get through Thanksgiving and enjoy that holiday? It just seems to me that there is plenty of time to start the Christmas carols after we have properly celebrated Thanksgiving and given thanks for all of our blessings.
Christmas is a very special and magical time of year for me. I’m sure there are people somewhere who “plan ahead,” puting up their tree and stringing the lights and garland around the inside and outside of their house on Labor Day because they think “it is good practical common sense” to stretch the holiday season out. The only problem is that when the day finally rolls around it’s not going to be as special for them. And if I live across the street from them and see their house like this every day and night, Christmas isn’t going to be as special for me, either. But this doesn’t mean there should be a law against it. In my mind it just diminishes the holiday to have it on display long before the holiday season begins.
Christmas to me is both … “the most wonderful time of the year” and a major aggravation. Guess that means I’m normal. Love the holiday season, with all it’s religious and secular pomp – hate the shopping.
I have to agree with Will about the music. I prefer Christmas music, on any sort of public broadcast, played mainly after Thanksgiving. Of course, if I’m shopping in a “Christmas Castle” in May I would expect to hear Christmas music. I love the music of the season and play my choices any time of year. Commercially, I can’t imagine a radio station already playing non-stop Christmas music. That would be a little much this early, IMO. In my area we only get 24 hour seasonal music on Christmas Eve.
My sentiments exactly, Judy. Additionally, while I don’t care for the Christmas carols being played this early on the radio, I have to confess that I keep the Chieftains Christmas CD in my car’s stereo year round and listen to it when I want a little of that feel good feeling that comes with the holiday . . . or when I just want to listen to some really good whistle playing.
when i was your son’s age, will, i would have agreed with him cause i wanted christmas to be every day of the year. now that i’m older, and maybe wiser, i realize that it would be too much of a good thing and quickly become old and boring. maybe this is what you’re trying to say about not pushing the holiday past the holiday season?
Will - your radio station is late. We have one here that started playing 24/7 Christmas music THREE WEEKS ago!!! And it must be some type of canned, timed program, cuz the person that has it on here at work has the same song playing at the same time each day.
As for “Holly Jolly Christmas” - there’s a radio comedian here that does a “Best of Burl Ives” routine:
“And now, folks, for his number one hit…”
“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas…”
“and second hit:”
“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas…”
“and who can forget:”
“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas…”
I think you get the picture.
And I, too, love that Chieftains’ CD - “St. Stephen’s Day Murders” is always a pick me up!!!
I agree it does seem like we are getting Christmas Commercialism starting a little early this year. I’m wondering if that’s not because folks are reacting to strain of a devisive election and the stress of an active war in Iraq. I for one, welcome it, this year, for those reasons. We need a little more time to get things together.
Sounds like a computerized station. One of the radio stations I worked at was like that. We got the prerecorded music on cartridge tapes (this was before the days of compact discs) and they were inserted into a large carousel that would move the cartridge into the tape player at the same time each day. The news and radio spots were also recorded on cartridges and put into the carousel to play at their designated times. We rarely went on the air live at that station.
I have to admit that I’m not familiar with that one. Perhaps the Chieftains have more than one Christmas CD . . .
I have ‘St. Stephen’s Day Murders’ with Elvis Costello on the Chieftain’s The Bells of Dublin CD, 1991. Not sure which one Missy has. What’s the one you keep in your CD player? One can’t have too many good CDs.
Actually . . . I don’t know. Someone made a copy of the CD for me, knowing that I like Christmas music and the Chieftains. The one track that stands out is Burgess Meredith narrating “Don Oiche Ud I mBeithil” (That Night in Bethlehem) in both Gaelic and English. The low whistle on that track is especially haunting. The Boar’s Head Carol and several other songs have some fabulous soprano whistle segments. It’s well worth the listen even for someone who doesn’t care for Christmas music.
You’re right, I wouldn’t mind another Chiefains’ CD (Christmas or otherwise). Who knows, I may even buy this one myself.
Will O’Ban
PS: You know, the CD I have could very well be the same one as yours (The Bells of Dublin). I read this link and it has a lot of the same songs. Some of them, though, didn’t make it on to my copy. http://www.rambles.net/chieftains_bells.html
…I don’t know about it sounding like Christmas around here (havn’t paid any attention to what’s on the radio or on the speakers at my local grocery market), but it sure as hell has been looking a lot like Christmas in my neck of the woods. The snow has been coming down.
As far as Christmas tunes go, you can’t beat a little Bing Crosby during the Holidays…
. What a lovely and poignant melody! There are so many cool seasonal songs and the season is so very short I don’t mind starting this early.
), and Wren songs. Great fun to sing and harmonize with.
Halloween hadn’t even started 
. What a lovely and poignant melody!