As advent and the Christmas season approach it is good to begin planning now how best to navigate the holiday season to get the most out of it, or rather as heads of homes, to put the most into it. Advent and Christmas are filled with traditions and practices that we often go through unthinkingly. A pristine example of this is the music.
The day after Thanksgiving, if not sooner, radio stations around the country will begin to blare with what have become the staple American Christmas songs. Most of us know them, "Frosty the Snowman", "Silver Bells", "Jingle Bells", and of course "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". But, what is it that all of these Christmas songs have in common?
The common theme in all of these songs is that Christ is nowhere to be found in them. Which makes it absurd that they are called Christmas songs. Nearly all of these songs were written in the 1940's and 50's and have become part of the traditional American Christmas ever since. None of them are particularly good musically, lyrically, or containing potent messages. At their best they are exercises in sentimentalism as the singer drolls on in a melancholy manner about "Being home for Christmas". At their worst these songs are vapid, childish, if not insulting to the true meaning of Christmas, yet adults feel obliged to endure the twaddle in many a December car ride.
Whether of the puerile or mawkish variety, each of these songs have acted as a secularizing force to supplant Christmas with what can be termed "Winter Holiday". Christmas when stripped of its Christ leaves us with songs about trees, snow glistening, Santa Claus, grandmas getting ran over by reindeer, living snowmen, sleds on hills, and or course, heroic red nosed reindeer. There are even bad movies to accompany the bad songs to drill the bad message into your head all the more.
The worldly are often wiser than the sons of light in this regard, the secularizers know what they are about and they give it to their audiences good and hard. Meanwhile, many Christians simply fumble along unwittingly accepting the Christ-less Christmas propaganda into their homes. It's harmless, I remember watching that when I was a kid, it's fun, what's the big deal? For those of us parenting little Christians, the reality is that these songs and movies send a confusing message to our children. What do red-nosed reindeer, frosty snowmen, sleigh rides, chestnuts roasting over open fires, and silver bells have to do with Christmas?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. These are things that may accompany life in winter, and that's what the secularists have replaced Christmas with, winter holiday, where we celebrate winter life and give gifts to one another for no particular reason. How hollow.
It was probably 3-4 years back I can recall riding in our van with our children during Advent season, one of them asked for some Christmas music and so I obligingly and grudgingly put on one of the stations playing the bad Christmas music. Most if not all of the songs already annoyed me at this time, as the music washed over me with the over-singing from performers warbling out the idiotic lyrical content it invariably would cause me to go into rants about the content and mocking imitations of the ridiculous falsetto singing. Perhaps this is what my children really wanted, to see dad at his best.
As I listened to the music and its vapid content and the shamelessly self aggrandizing performances, it dawned on me, "Why are we doing this?" Why do we listen to this garbage every year? Particularly when there is a treasure trove of rich Christ centered hymns and songs that obviously would be more fitting for the season, why do we put on Mariah Carey, and people warbling away about a Christmas tree's lovely branches? Surely we of all people have something far more meaningful to sing about?
Creating More Robust Traditions
The secularists are not going to promote a Christ centered Christmas on their centralized platforms of radio and television, we need to do that in a decentralized manner in our homes. Today the great music of the ages is right at our fingertips, before car trips we can load up our phones with traditional advent hymns like "O Come O Come Emmanuel", "Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silent" and Handel's "Messiah". It need not all be choral arrangements, there are plenty of bluegrass or Celtic folk versions of these great songs. During Christmastide, there are countless great songs that can be played that are centered on the first coming of Christ.
These are the songs I want to reverberate in my home, not the twaddle being served up by the secularists. Music is important, it gets into us, it echoes in our minds. That's precisely why the secularists had to replace the rich potent Christmas music with the shallow winter holiday songs, the Christmas music made them uncomfortable.
Imagine being a thorough secularist and hearing chipper carolers singing that we need to, "Remember Christ our Savior, was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray."
You can just feel them squirming can't you? People singing such songs are celebrating something, something deep, something profound, something eternal...best to just get back to the chestnuts roasting over an open fire before things get serious.
We as Christians ought to feel just as uncomfortable when the winter holiday songs come on, because these songs are actually an attack on Christmas. They were created to drain Christmas of its potency and to make it vapid and silly. We need to see this music for what it is, and it is not innocent, cute, or traditional, it is a direct attack on Christmas to strip it of its Christ. We need to resist it for that reason. The secularists have drowned out the rich vibrant music with their vapid nonsense, it is our duty to return the favor.
Don't get me wrong I do actually like few of the winter holiday songs, "Happy Holiday" by Andy Williams is probably my favorite. I like it because it sounds rather boozy and has a nice swing to it. I can picture it being sung by a Frank Sinatra type in a full suit with a glass of scotch in one hand and a big band behind him. You got me, that's kinda cool.
But again, what's the Holiday being celebrated?
Conclusion
I want this all to be an encouragement for us as Christians, an encouragement to consciously create robust Christ centered Christmas traditions in our homes. If we are going to do that recovery of the music is one of the first things we need to pry out of the gnarled withered hands of the secularists. The people at Comcast, Clear Channel, and network television aren't going to serve up rich Christmas music for you, you're going to have to swim upstream against the current to obtain the real riches.
Toss the winter holiday stuff into the rubbish bin, revive the potency of a Christ-centered Christmas and let the secularists clutching their hollow husks squirm in our wake. As I said at the start of this, the time to plan is now, failure to plan is planning to fail. Advent begins November 27th, get your playlists for car rides and the home ready, get your nativity scenes now, plan which movies to watch now rather than passively letting the secularlist networks serve that up for you. May we fill our homes with the richness of permanent things as we celebrate the Lord of Heaven coming to Earth.
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