Lessons FROM Carols: What Christmas Music Can Teach Us About Popular and Classical Music

It’s inescapable this time of year: the sweet strains of “Away in a Manger,” the jazzy rhythms of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” or the majestic chorus of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” As the holidays draw nearer, celebrations abound, and four-thirty sunsets turn into nights of moonlit snow, the sounds of Christmas music become so prevalent that they almost seem to emanate from the frostbitten air around us, making it virtually impossible to go anywhere without being treated to yet another rendition of “Sleigh Ride,” “Frosty the Snowman,” or some other nondescript tune involving an exorbitant amount of jingle bells. Indeed, Christmas music is so pervasive throughout the holiday season that many of us might actually look forward to Christmas being over with just so that we can enjoy a change of repertoire, even if it is the “Auld Lang Syne” sung horribly out of tune at a New Years’ Eve party. But while the perennial genre may seem to serve as little more than background noise while we anxiously attempt to remember our great-aunt’s shirt size at the department store, a closer look at its perception in popular culture reveals that there’s actually a lot more to be learned from Christmas music than the story of Rudolph or how Bethlehem hosted some awesome free concerts back in the day. In fact, when considered objectively, Christmas music can ultimately be seen as a veritable microcosm of competing classical and popular styles, teaching us important lessons about their function and meaning in contemporary society.

Generally speaking, Christmas music can be organized into three distinct categories: traditional, “popularized” traditional, and popular. The traditional Christmas music, of course, is the extensive repertoire of well-known carols and church hymns, most of which have been standard since the mid-nineteenth century and several of which were written by prominent composers of the time. Surprisingly, the latter is a fact that tends to go overlooked, even by classical musicians; there always seems to be someone at a Christmas Eve church gig who discovers (with great enthusiasm) that Mendelssohn wrote the music for “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” or that Gustav Holst penned the poignant strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Ironically, the average person will almost never think of Christmas carols as classical music–mostly because the average person thinks that all classical music sounds more or less the same as a Mozart piano concerto. You only need to visit the local drugstore in order to witness the manifestation of such irony; wait around in the decoration aisle until “Hark the Herald” comes on (you can guarantee it will within seven minutes, tops) and casually ask the unsuspecting shopper browsing ornaments next to you if they know who wrote it. Unless you’re at Carnegie Hall Convenience or something, I sincerely doubt that they will say Mendelssohn. Yet, I also very much doubt that your fellow shopper will express distaste for the tune. Who doesn’t love “Hark,” with its rousing choruses and almost-impossible-to-hit high notes? Yet, many people don’t love classical music. Or at least, they don’t think that they do.

However, I must add a footnote to the above: most of the time, you won’t hear the original version of “Hark” outside of a church. The drugstore version is probably something that even Mendelssohn himself wouldn’t have recognized as his own work (especially because he actually wrote the music to commemorate the invention of the printing press–but that’s beside the point). It’s going to be jazzy, syncopated, and performed by electronic instruments, while the vocalist (if there is one) will be taking more rhythmic liberties than the most egotistical classical soloist. The gods of popular music (whom I like to imagine as a council of morose deities looking more or less identical to Elvis Presley) know that they’re never going to be able to sell the organ and church choir variety, so they throw in Britney Spears and a couple of background vocalists to make it more palatable for the average person. It’s like eating a gingerbread cookie as opposed to downing a pint of crushed ginger itself (note: don’t try that at home). We’ve “popularized” these traditional tunes because they’re the staples of Christmas music–we can’t not play them–but we (or the gods) can make them as close to the popular style of music as possible.

While there’s certainly nothing intrinsically wrong with such an alteration–after all, the angelic strains of the Vienna Boys Choir probably aren’t very appropriate for CVS–it reveals the stark contrast between classical and popular music’s respective emotional affects. Imagine, in your mind’s eye, an immense choir in an ancient cathedral, softly singing the weighty notes of “O, Holy Night,” their faces only illuminated by the light of dripping advent candles and their voices echoing into the depths of the blackened sanctuary; and now imagine standing in line at McDonald’s, hearing the same song sung by the Spice Girls on the radio while you debate whether or not to order a Big Mac. Doesn’t quite achieve the same effect, does it? This is but one of many lessons that we can learn about “popularized” Christmas music: it can work as ear candy, but just like regular candy, it’s all artificial.

Finally, we turn to the third type of Christmas music, the so-called “popular” variety. Suspiciously–but not surprisingly–this type typically avoids any subjects that relate to the religious aspects of Christmas, pandering instead to the secular aesthetic. Heroic reindeer and bumbling snowmen are fair game, as are Christmas trees, sleigh rides, and unfortunate grandmothers, but manger scenes and shepherds are most decidedly out of the picture. I say this is unsurprising because that’s really what popular music does–it embodies the essence of popular culture, telling people what they want to hear. With the never-ending cultural debate about the supposed “War on Christmas,” arguments over the appropriateness of public nativity scenes, and the encouraged alteration of the traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting to “Happy Chrishanukwanza”or whatever interfaith variation one prefers, it’s not exactly shocking that the aforementioned popular music gods have chosen the secular approach; the music industry would be accused of being a veritable theocracy if it produced overtly religious songs. But it doesn’t take a genius to see which facet of Christmas music is more substantial. It’s certainly not the Spice Girls version of “O, Holy Night,” in any case.

So as you go about your holiday duties and traverse across perilously unplowed roads to that impossible-to-find church gig over the next two weeks, take a few moments to really listen to the incessant playlist of Christmas music emanating from the department store speakers or your car radio.  What is it trying to say? What is it really saying? And most importantly, what does it say to you?