songs of the season

I feel obligated to write about Christmas music, mostly because…it's Christmas. In my experience, finding good Christmas music is not an easy task. Outside of a worship service, I've never really enjoyed straight up traditional renditions of Christmas music and for the most part, don't care for original Christmas songs. I like the classics, done with some style. Year after year I scour the web looking for that one hidden gem that has somehow alluded me all this time. You know what I find? Nothing. So, I'm done searching. I have a small collection of things that I like and for the last couple of years I've been content to keep that in rotation. There is nothing surprising about the contents of my collection, at least in my opinion. There's nothing controversial here, no guilty pleasures (except for maybe Amy Grant's "Breath of Heaven" and the Barenaked Ladies w/Sarah McLachlan singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" - freely admitted, however. It's hard to find good Christmas music!).

My favorites are without a doubt Sufjan Stevens' five disc set Songs for Christmas and Vince Guaraldi's music for A Charlie Brown Christmas. John Fahey's New Possibility collection is pretty good too. I love Belle & Sebastian's version of "O Come O Come Emmanuel," Feist's version of "Lo, How A Rose E're Blooming," and the Temptations classic rendition of "Silent Night". And that pretty much does it for me. Sure, I have a bunch of other stuff that is listenable. I have acquired various other Christmas collections that feature traditional classics being performed in traditional ways such as Herman Apple's Ses Carillons Et Ses Percussions. I was also given an album of instrumental Christmas music that sounds like it was made in a rollerskating rink in the 1960's. It's pretty great, but I have no idea who performed it, unfortunately (This is the price I pay for hoarding music. I often don't have much information about the album).

What I'm finding is that I'm becoming increasingly intolerant of Christmas music that has nothing to do with Christ. I'm becoming less and less interested in the traditions of Christmas, the tasks that keep us all running around, busy with things that have nothing to do with why we take time to celebrate this time of year. I caught the last few minutes of A Charlie Brown Christmas the other night on television and was struck by how unashamed it is of the gospel. Vince Guaraldi isn't the only thing I love about the Peanuts. The children hum as Linus reads the from the Bible, giving Charlie Brown a lesson about the real meaning of Christmas. How great is that?! I almost couldn't believe it was being played on television. I guess some Christmas traditions are okay.

Merry Christmas!