A Christmas Season Announcement about Religious Music

A lot of people in the world of musical performance seem to think, “The average person is tired of the same old renditions of Christmas carols. I’m going to give them the gift of something different.”

This badly misunderstands the purpose of religious music, and of holiday music, and especially of religious holiday music. The point of religious holiday music is not musical novelty, as with the current Top 40. The point of it is tradition and sheer beauty. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis coined the term “the law of undulation.” An older demon is explaining to a younger one how humans experience time. The basic idea is that humans are pinned to time and can’t get out of it… but God has given us a taste of eternity, in the cycles of life. Whether it is from day to day – sunrise and sunset, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, etc. – or from season to season – this spring, this summer, this Christmas – the repetition, the combination of difference and sameness, conveys in some small way a sense of eternity.

So, let me be blunt. No one wants to hear your stupid Country & Western version of his (or her!) favorite Christmas carol. What we want is the sheer beauty of these carols – and time has refined some of them to a point of almost painful beauty – and the sense of eternity of experiencing Christmas, once again.

The other motive for the mangling of Christmas music is sheer ego, and this is not an honest mistake but a sin. I really doubt, when you mangle a Christmas carol, that God is best pleased with you obtrusively inserting yourself into a song that is supposed to be about His Son.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is a notable offender here, at least the performance I caught some of on TV recently. Stop “innovating”!

I wish I had a time machine and could go back to the pre-YouTube age and release an album called “Christmas Carols Sung Traditionally.” It would be exactly that, and I’d have walked away with millions of dollars.

On point: In Milton’s Paradise Regained, the Devil is trying to tempt Jesus:

Satan to Jesus:
Thy great Father: he seeks glory,
And for his glory all things made, all things
Orders and governs, nor content in Heaven
By all his Angels glorifi’d, requires
Glory from men, from all men good or bad,
Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption;
Above all Sacrifice, or hallow’d gift
Glory he requires, and glory he receives…

To whom our Saviour fervently reply’d…
what could he less expect
Then glory and benediction, that is thanks,
The slightest, easiest, readiest recompence
From them who could return him nothing else.

Please understand, Mr. or Miss Innovation, Christmas music is supposed to be about God, not you.

Here are some performances of some carols that are rendered traditionally:

• Oh Holy Night, from the Home Alone soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjFPM-9u80E
• The Carol of the Bells, by the Boston Pops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmAYK67WDt8
• What Child Is This, sung by one Rachel Hardy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPxDn7W7UEg. As far as I’m concerned, it ends at 2:58, though she adds a coda after that. It’s not horrible, but it’s not necessary either. (Also, she’s a good-looking girl, but you should still minimize the window so you don’t have to watch her vamping for the camera.)
• Sing We Now of Christmas, a nice performance by a high school chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJOBIqiIgdo

Honorable mentions. These can’t be considered traditional because they’re instrumentals and they involve too much improvisation. But they’re quite good, and they don’t mangle the melodies with bizarrely extended phrasing, surreal ululations that sound like aliens drowning in maple syrup, or harmonies that were apparently chosen by random number generators:

• The Holly and the Ivy, George Winston’s piano arrangement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwyJXMjsyNI
• What Child Is This, a trio of acoustic guitars. This starts off too show-offy and “artsy,” but once they get rolling it’s gorgeous. Start listening at 1:53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPRFk8sLIPw. While it’s 5:40 long, it effectively ends at 4:04; after that they’re just noodling.