Sunday November 27, 2022
Years ago, I thought I was giving the Sunday School kids a treat – no dull boring lesson today; we’d just sing some familiar Christmas carols.
We tried. One of the mothers bravely played the piano. A teenager hoping to emulate Eric Clapton played a 12=string guitar. The singing, however, was less than enthusiastic: Away in a manger… Oh Come All Ye Faithful…
“Okay,” I said, “you’re not keen on our choices. What would you like to sing?”
Bigmouth at the back called out, “Rudolph!”
Without waiting for either piano or guitar, the whole group of kids launched into Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
They sang lustily. With enthusiasm. They knew all the words. They also knew all the words to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. And to Silver Bells.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that those weren’t really Christmas carols. And that they had all been written by Jews. I don’t say that to disparage either Jews or the songs they wrote. I just find it interesting that more than half of the songs we hear, and sing, over and over during the Christmas season were written by people whose religious faith does not include an infant Messiah being born in Bethlehem.
Secular Christmas
Technically, a Christmas carol is a religious song. It tells the stories of the birth of Jesus. It’s about Mary, the shepherds, the visiting Magi. Silent Night. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. O Little Town of Bethlehem.
Until roughly the 1940s, those were the only songs sung about Christmas, and they were sung mainly in Christian worship services.
Then Irving Berlin, a Jew, wrote White Christmas. Bing Crosby turned it into the best-selling record of all time.
It wasn’t expected to be a huge success. In fact, in its first season, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, it slipped by almost unnoticed
By the second Christmas, for all those soldiers slogging ashore in the battles of Midway or Guadalcanal, it captured their nostalgia for a life they once knew.
White Christmas launched a whole new industry.
Over the next few decades, dozens of new Christmas songs emerged: Sleigh Bells. Sleigh Ride. Happy Holidays. I’ll be Home for Christmas. Right up to Eartha Kitt’s steamy Santa Baby.
Written by people like Johnny Marks. Jule Steyne. George Wyle. Fred Coots. Sammy Cahn. Mel Torme. Leroy Anderson.
Jewish, all of them.
The season, not the reason
Musicology websites on the internet seem to agree that Jews flocked into the music industry because it was one of the few commercial businesses where they didn’t face anti-Semitism. I think that might be an overly generous interpretation of history; I’m sure there was anti-Semitism there, as there was everywhere else.
Still, Jewish composers and lyricists dominated the music business for several decades.
And since the Christian Christmas, with baby Jesus as God Incarnate, was out of bounds for them, they re-invented Christmas.
Listen to the lyrics. Listen past their familiarity, to hear what’s NOT there. They don’t mention Jesus. Or God. Or Bethlehem. They treat Christmas only as a special time of the year. A season for joy and celebration. And often, they don’t even mention Christmas itself. Just winter, and snow, and good feelings.
Endless change
A secular Christmas was not new, by the way. If I recall correctly, Charles Dicken’s famous A Christmas Carol doesn’t mention Jesus either. Or Incarnation.
Nor does another Christmas staple, Dylan Thomas’s poem, A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Indeed, one of the most popular religious songs at Christmas concerts, O Holy Night, was a collaboration between an atheist and a Jew, a full century before American Jews changed Christmas music forever. The Catholic Church tried to ban it, unsuccessfully. It was considered “unsuitable for Christmas services.”
If you’re surprised that so much of our now-traditional Christmas music was written by Jews, perhaps you should remember that the first Christmas was also given to us by a Jew.
Christianity as a new faith didn’t begin until maybe 20 years after Jesus’s death, when another Jew, a man named Saul or Paul, exported the beliefs of a small Jewish sect to Europe. And even he has mixed feelings about Christmas. In Galatians 4, he praises the birth of Jesus “to a woman”; five verses later, he denounces being “enslaved…to special days and months and seasons….”
Christmas itself didn’t start being celebrated as one of those “special days” for at least another hundred years.
Sometimes our Christmas season seems to be about recycling the same old traditions. It isn’t. And it never has been.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
You readers seem quite divided on the reputability of The Guardian.
Eileen Wttewaall: “I read the Guardian. But I don’t always agree with a writer, and some major topics are covered by several writers trying to explain a current situation; e.g., war in Ukraine, effects of climate. If ‘truth’ was easy to spot, explain, write about, it probably wouldn’t so easily be distorted, turned into misinformation, etc.”
Vera Gottlieb reads The Guardian daily, “But I find The Guardian very biased when it comes to reporting on the Russia/Ukraine debacle. I have written to The Guardian pointing to their bias -- all articles about Ukraine but when it comes to Russia, nothing but attacks. I am sure that The Guardian isn’t the only western news media that is so biased.”
Lois Hollstedt asks, “In an era of 30-second sound/video bites, is responsible reporting possible?
The competition for our time to learn about ‘the truth’ has enabled the liars to repeat their lies over and over. In depth unbiased reporting takes time to do and to hear or read. Many people do not have or take the time. A trusted source like The Guardian does help us get the real facts.”
Steve Roney doesn’t consider The Guardian a “trusted source”: “The Guardian may be respected for some things, but not for its copyediting and proofreading. In the UK, it’s commonly referred to as “The Grauniad” due to its reputation for typos.
“I share your concern over the idea of a ‘truth sandwich’ when quoting Donald Trump. This is a plain violation of journalistic ethics.
“The proper approach, of course, if some controversial assertion is made, is to seek and quote a spokesperson from the other side. It is not permissible for the referee to stride to the centre of the ring and throw a sucker punch.
“Of course, as you note, Trump tries to use media to his advantage. Just like every other successful politician or campaign director who ever lived. If he does it better than others, that calls for admiration, not condemnation or subversion.
“While I agree with your objection to the ‘truth sandwich,’ I was stumped,” Steve admitted, with my illustration which paired starvation in Somalia with a quotation from Jesus. “It seems such a bad example, it leaves me unable to see the point you are trying to make.”
Judyth Mermelstein, by contrast, likes the “truth sandwich” approach: “Whatever your reservations, the ‘truth sandwich’ approach seems infinitely preferable to the alternatives:
-- simply quoting the lie direct without contradiction: “Donald Trump today tweeted that either Joe Biden’s 2020 victory be invalidated or a new presidential election be held immediately” without mentioning thar his demand is completely illegal;
-- ‘bothsidesism’ whereby the above is followed by ‘Senator X and other Democrats claim neither procedure would be legal’ which makes the issue sound purely partisan rather than constitutional.
“In other words, I’m not convinced that surrounding a false assertion with facts is bad journalism. Facts matter, especially in an era when quoting lies as ‘news’ is so likely to deceive…”
John Shaffer has had to live with misinformation campaigns: “This issue was not academic for me when I was the pastor in Nome, Alaska. Because I chose to get involved in a political issue (alcohol availability), I was attacked in approximately 20 newspaper editorials. Many lies were told about me and my motivation in those editorials. Mostly, I ignored them, but they were reprinted in other newspapers, as they were indeed ‘colorful’, and people believed the lies.
“It cost me an appointment and a promotion. (United Methodist style) That turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“I don't know if I could have changed history or not.
“However, in Nome, where I had to live with the ‘lies’, I and some others did start an alternative newspaper and it did provide me with a platform, when I wished to use it. However, my responses were not colorful enough to rate reproduction in other newspapers. In Nome, people had access to an alternate reality, but not in Anchorage or Fairbanks.
“Lies do need to be called out, in my view.”
Lesley Clare: “I have long wondered why terrorists are reported as ‘claiming responsibility’ instead of ‘confessing to the murders of ...’ Words are important.
“More and more when I listen to the news I hear reporters interpreting the objects of their report, which used to be the job of editorials, didn't it? Mind, with access to news around the world, 60 times every minute, just the choice of what to report is an interpretation. Maybe instead of a truth sandwich, the Guardian could deal with Trump's aim for the headlines by limiting its Trump coverage to the same number of words as other candidates for the presidency.”
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns