The Approaching Christmas Season, Fake Downtowns, and Musing on Christmas Music
This is Part I of at least two in a series on the Christmas season, focusing on its music – there just might be a lot more to say than I thought
Well, it’s been November for more than a week now, and that probably means many different things to many different people.
For some, it’s Movember, and if you were born with one X and one Y chromosome, and a penis – and you are prone to virtue signaling on social media, it’s time to publicly become paranoid about your mental health, male suicide, and prostate & testicular cancer. If you really want to be irritating, put that paranoia on full display at work.
Then again, you could just be a man.
Mind your own business while leaving everyone else to mind theirs.
For others, it means Veterans Day – an opportunity to show your gratitude for those among us who have served our nation in its military but are no longer on active duty.
For the more craven among us, it undoubtedly means Black Friday sales, some of which have been ongoing since Labor Day (or so it seems), but which will extend well into December.
No matter what November may or may not mean to you, for everyone else it means the first of the three major holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas (Eve, and Day), and the New Year (Eve, and Day) that make up the American holiday season – is upon us.
It also means that Christmas music is not far behind, if it hasn’t begun being played in public places, already. SiriusXM usually launches one or two holiday music channels even before Thanksgiving.
Personally, I find much of the popular secular Christmas music to be hackneyed and tedious. Ergo, I don’t willingly listen to much of it, but I know others who do, so in the interest of consistency with my libertarian sensibilities, more power to them!
For my part, I will seek to honour what I hold to be the true meaning of the holiday, and will listen to the music that celebrates it. I’ll cover that in Part II, or III.
Until last year, I was quite unaware of my disdain for so much of the popular “traditional” secular Christmas music. Perhaps it was the result of an awakening I had while trying (without success) to find a parking spot at Southlake Town Square while throughout the shopping center, strategically placed loudspeakers blared out Brenda Lee singing, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".
This, on the same day there was a pep rally for the local high school football team that was headed for the semi-finals and the opportunity to play for the state championship – an institution much, much bigger here in Texas – even more so than the traditional Longhorns-Aggies1 game on Thanksgiving.
These open-air shopping centers serve the same purpose as the despised enclosed malls but are even more soulless (as if that is possible) because they are miniaturized versions of Seahaven Island, the artificial and very antiseptic hometown of Truman Burbank in the film, The Truman Show – designed down to the most minute detail, except for the homeless people.
Walking through Southlake Town Square, it seemed the majority of the storefronts were outlets for national retailers (Warby Parker, Ann Taylor, Talbott’s), and for locally owned and operated national franchises like Super Cuts – but there are precious few truly local, sole proprietorships occupying much of the available space – and of those that do, many are so highly specialized one has to wonder how they turn a profit. This may be true of most of the enclosed malls as well, but it seemed less economically vibrant, to me.
These types of shopping centers in many of the exurbs and smaller communities outside of Dallas, and Fort Worth but still within the Metroplex, are designed to emulate the thriving business districts of countless small towns, only without putting in the time to become institutions.
Typically, those close-knit business districts bordered the town square on all sides, had grown up with the community, and many of the merchants’ enterprises – hardware stores, diners & cafés, pharmacies, clothing stores, banks – all locally owned and operated – had been going concerns for generations.
Those burghs, however, were part of an America that is no more. They have all but vanished from the landscape – both figuratively and literally. At best, Parker Square and similar are a pale imitation of, and an affront to, the memory of that they are intended to replicate. What they represent instead is Instant Small-Town Downtown – just add tax-increment financing.
The advent of the aforementioned enclosed shopping malls – Southdale Center Mall, the nation’s first2 – began to doom the small towns as early as the late 1950s. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, Urban Renewal (an oxymoron if ever there was one) only accelerated the decline.3 In fact, like every other government project, it achieved exactly the opposite of its stated purpose:
…to restore economic viability to a given area by attracting external private and public investment and by encouraging business start-ups and survival.4
In the 1980s, Walmart would do its part to finish the destruction of small-town America by doing what the malls could not. Walmart’s business model was to build in a rural area, and using its economies of scale, crush any competition in the nearby townships. Soon, those surrounding municipalities would cease to exist as little more than countryside bedroom communities – but, I digress.
Regardless of what precipitated my realization, we must begin with this question:
When did, “My Favourite Things” from, The Sound of Music, become a Christmas song?
This question has been discussed at length with trusted confidantes, and the conclusion drawn by me is that it is a conspiracy by the same organizations that have been behind initiatives to give the bogus holiday of Kwanzaa more exposure and normalize its existence – in this instance, the objective being the even further secularization of the music of the holiday.
It’s a fine song in the musical, but it seems to me that the public is being coerced to accept its being forced into Christmas music canon.
As a result of said awakening, I compiled the list below. For each song, assume that all versions, regardless of the performer, are ones I would not miss were they to be nuked from low Earth orbit – and now, on with the countdown (so to speak).
Christmas Songs That If I Never Hear Again, It Will Be Far Too Soon
“The Twelve Days Of Christmas”
With this being the only acceptable version.
“Feliz Navidad”
– especially when performed by José Feliciano
“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”
– particularly when performed by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
“The Chipmunk Song”
“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”
“All I Want For Christmas Is You”
– especially when performed by Mariah Carey
Any Christmas-themed song by, The Carpenters
Because hearing Karen Carpenter's voice makes me ravenously hungry.
“Blue Christmas”
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
“Jingle Bell Rock”
“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
“Last Christmas”
– especially when performed by WHAM!
“Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)”
“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
“This Christmas”
“Do They Know It's Christmas?”
“Mary, Did You Know?”
– especially when performed by Pentatonix
Not because it isn't a good song, or that they aren't capable performers, but every year it seems everyone raves about their cover of it, and I refuse to be part of that crowd.
“Frosty, The Snow Man”
“Please Come Home For Christmas”
“Here Comes Santa Claus”
“Merry Christmas, Baby”
“Up On The Housetop”
“When My Heart Finds Christmas”
Exceptions
As always, there are exceptions to the “rule” (the word is used quite loosely) and I reserve the right to be a hypocrite.
The first is when any song of the season is performed by Frank Sinatra. If it’s Sinatra, even this, while no less banal than anything listed above, is listenable:
The other exception is when any one of the songs on the list above are performed by a jazz combo such as, The Ramsey Lewis Trio, or, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, or, The Charlie Byrd Trio, or any marquee jazz musician accompanied by solid session players. One of my favourite such albums is The Christmas Collection (various performers).
Now, lest anyone conclude that when it comes to Christmas music, I am some rigid pre-nightmare Scrooge, bound by my inescapable White Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage and upbringing, there are a few irreverent songs of the season that I’m happy to share. This one is my among my favourites:
…as is this one:
…and this one is included strictly for shock value:
However, this – while not at all irreverent – is my favourite, hands down!
The best line in the entire song:
...the whole thing is arranged just to aggravate Dad…
If this seems to be a little early, just remember that Thanksgiving is now fewer than two weeks away. Not sure about you, but come this time of year, I feel more than a little like Phil Connors.
Thank you, dear reader, for your patience, and your indulgence!
Until next time…
The list is by no means exhaustive, so feel free to suggest any additions in the comments.
Note: It is not my preference that any of these and/or other Christmas songs be banned, only that if I never heard them again, my life would not be diminished in the least.
https://www.kut.org/sports/2012-11-21/a-longhorn-tradition-without-the-traditional-foe
Until 2012, the opponent had always been Texas A&M, when it became Texas Christian University, courtesy of the Aggies’ departure for the S.E.C.
https://www.shoprockvale.com/when-and-where-was-the-first-mall-built
Edina, Minnesota is, incidentally, the first suburb in America to commit suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal
Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 710. ISBN 978-0415862875.
If you're looking for unusual Christmas songs, I recommend "Snoopy's Christmas" by the Royal Guardsmen. My musical tastes are definitely uncommon; I'm proud to say I don't even recognize every song on your "never again" list.
I do not know what you mean by "economically vibrant," but right around there in your long story you say: "many are so highly specialized one has to wonder how they turn a profit." Ahem! Listen up~ THAT is for richies who like shopping. They will go to a new store for something just to have the experience of shopping for that one item. If there is a store for it --- hey, suddenly they find out the need it!