"There had better be an offering to the Old Gods"

December 10, 2015 1:51 AM

John Roderick of the Long Winters sets down the criteria for a good Christmas song.
posted by maskd (32 comments total)

Needs more Mutabaruka: Postpone Christmas
posted by chavenet at 2:54 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The secular Christmas (winter solstice) songs people like are homely. Because we are scattered, you'll be home for Christmas as soon as you're done driving home for Christmas, or you're stuck in an airport for Christmas, or you can't make it home for Christmas at all, or your loved one is far away for Christmas. Kids want presents and sweets. Adults want peace (and quiet). Strong intoxicants. Good food. Seeing relatives you don't otherwise see much. Intoxicants. Remembering people who will never be back for Christmas. More intoxicants. Wishing people well through song and cards and annual tradition because you're no damned good at these things otherwise. When the children have collapsed and everyone else is sufficiently drugged, throw in the silence of snow (in Northern climes, anyway) and the resonance of bells and the distance of stars and you're done.
posted by pracowity at 3:16 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

Whenever I hear 'John Roderick' I tend to also think 'Jonathan Coulton' which is funny because I don't think I knew on any conscious level that they'd ever met/worked together but it makes sense considering the circles they seem to run in.

Of course my immediate thought because of this connection was a Christmas song I really like by Jonathan Coulton, Chiron Beta Prime. Which. While awesome I don't think is quite the kind of Christmas song this article is about.

Anyway the article's enough to make me curious about their actual Christmas album so I'll have to check that out.
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 4:00 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's a nice shout out in there to the enjoyably off-kilter Jingle Bell Rocks!, the recent Mitchell Kezin documentary on collectors of obscure Christmas songs.
posted by fairmettle at 4:11 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not only are Halloween and Thanksgiving lacking in songs - but so are festivals right next to Christmas - for example this is the time of year for the Wiccan's duotheistic celebration of the birth of the horned god otherwise known as "Dryghtyn." All kinds of rhyming opportunities available there!

Failing that - Advent is the time to wear purple and compose the kind of antiphoral plainsong that would delight Hildegard of Bingen - (like this).
posted by rongorongo at 4:22 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

If your song doesn’t have heavy metal in its heart, it’s probably a St. Patrick’s Day song instead.

I was actually asked to record a drunken-Irish-bar-band version of Greensleeves for a publisher this year. Not sure what I'm saying, but ... maybe there's demand for some crossover there.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:59 AM on December 10, 2015

You probably shouldn't write a Christmas song at all as it is very difficult to do well, and can go very, very badly indeed if you go off the rails. Consider Paul McCartney - a freaking Beatle for god's sake - and the unmitigated disaster of crap his "Wonderful Christmastime" turned out to be. If someone as intimately familiar with what makes a great pop song can get so lost in the minefield that is Christmas music with such horrifying results, what are the odds your effort is going to be any good?
posted by Naberius at 5:11 AM on December 10, 2015

This is the One True Modern Christmas Song.

(And for anyone who may be contemplating a move to Austin/Dallas/Houston/San Antonio, this is what Texas is really like. Not those hipster things you keep hearing about, with the tech workers and the craft beer. This song is as Texas as it gets.)
posted by MexicanYenta at 5:16 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

To me fair, Sir Paul got lost in the minefield of up his own ass.
posted by wotsac at 5:20 AM on December 10, 2015

but guys what about the artistic merits of "Christmas Shoes"
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:24 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Great article, lots of quotes, but this:

" A couple hundred people in their fifties and sixties swarming dusty boxes of Anne Murray LPs, scarves tangled, grey-flecked hair and beards shining dully in the fluorescent gloom, reading glasses down their noses, shabby winter coats rustling like nylon waves against a corduroy shore. I got emotional watching from the wings, only because I could feel the cold hand of death on my shoulder."

really got to the core of why I don't collect anything or buy souvenirs of the places I visit, and as soon as MP3s became a useful medium I threw away all my old CDs. The past always distracts from the now.
posted by signal at 5:50 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whenever I hear 'John Roderick' I tend to also think 'Jonathan Coulton' which is funny because I don't think I knew on any conscious level that they'd ever met/worked together but it makes sense considering the circles they seem to run in.

Whenever I hear John Roderick I think "thanks to John Roderick and the Long Winters for the use of our theme song It's A Departure from the album Putting the Days to Bed".
posted by kmz at 5:50 AM on December 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

Roderick, like so many others, cannot distinguish between Christmas songs and winter songs. Most of what gets lumped into the catch-all term "Christmas carol" is just vaguely winterish, talking about snow and chill and sleigh rides and such. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; Happy Xmas (War is Over); O Holy Night: these are songs about Christmas and/or Jesus. There is nothing in Jingle Bells or Sleigh Ride or Winter Wonderland or Frosty the Snowman or Let It Snow or about fifty others concerning yuletide or mangers or angels, but these generalized winter songs get banished from the airwaves four days into winter.

Ironically, Roderick seems almost entirely unfamiliar with his subject. He complains at one point:

Why are there so many Christmas songs but not a single Halloween or Thanksgiving song?

Dude, Jingle Bells was written as a Thanksgiving song and it was decades before it became associated with Christmas. You would have had to read all the way to the second line of the wikipedia entry to learn that, of course.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:06 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Consider Paul McCartney - a freaking Beatle for god's sake - and the unmitigated disaster of crap his "Wonderful Christmastime" turned out to be.

You bastard. That's going to be in my head for the rest of the day now.

♫ SIIIIMP-LEEEEE HAAAA-VINGG ♫
posted by leotrotsky at 6:08 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

This was a really funny read, even though I don't necessarily agree with his choices. I love music, and I love Christmas music/music about Christmas. There are a lot of great Christmas-themed songs out there.

Consider Paul McCartney - a freaking Beatle for god's sake - and the unmitigated disaster of crap his "Wonderful Christmastime" turned out to be.

Well, Paul's deep moments were few even in peak Beatle days. He's a tunesmith. But this is a song that I really puzzle at in life. I promise what is about to follow isn't representative of my general taste, but:for about the first three decades of "Wonderful Christmastime," I absolutely hated it, finding it as recoilingly hideous as, say, accidentally chewing an aspirin. But sometime over the last few years, I started to like it. I think I'm mellowing in my old age, Christmas pleasures are a lot simpler, and, hey, we're simply having a wonderful Christmastime. What more could you want? At least as I've aged, Christmas goes from being a pinnacle of all I could ever hope for in a youthful bacchanal to an intensely pleasant oasis with people I love amid an irritatingly busy life. Simply having a wonderful Christmastime: we're here tonight - and that's enough. The sound of the song ("Hey, Linda, I just got this cool Casio! Let's get high and make a song!") is now sort of pleasantly, innocently nostalgic to me instead of stupid and grating.
posted by Miko at 6:12 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

The jig is up / The plan's unfurled / And it's enough / To rule the world
posted by uncleozzy at 6:19 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Roderick, like so many others, cannot distinguish between Christmas songs and winter songs

And even that's part of a larger thing: Christmas songs are just about the only vestige we have left of seasonal songs. Up through the early 20th century, there were carols and hymns in both folk and written traditions for every season. Every tiny little Euro-Christian liturgical holiday - Michaelmas, Candlemas - had its appropriate hymns and carols, as did agricultural/pre-Christian celebrations around planting, haymaking, harvesting, solstices, etc.

It's really the advent of the machine surrounding the production, broadcast and sale of Western popular music as a commodity that killed the seasonal song. Today, we have a thin remnant of recognition of the "summer song," but the only season that really indulges in seasonal songs is Christmas, and that's everything to do with the general commandeering of Christmas by commercial powers and the fact that there's a big market for holiday music to support holiday ads and boost holiday sales. Of course, there is still an underlying recognition, especially in the Northern hemisphere, that this season is special in its way and I have a feeling we'd be singing special things at year's end through the darkest nights, regardless, but it's interesting that of all our past seasonally specific song traditions, only Christmas has really survived.
posted by Miko at 6:21 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

(There are, of course, 29 songs about Halloween and 12 about Thanksgiving. The page about Christmas Songs is a whole lot longer - but a surprisingly interesting read.)
posted by rongorongo at 6:53 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

But sometime over the last few years, I started to like it. I think I'm mellowing in my old age, Christmas pleasures are a lot simpler, and, hey, we're simply having a wonderful Christmastime. What more could you want? At least as I've aged, Christmas goes from being a pinnacle of all I could ever hope for in a youthful bacchanal to an intensely pleasant oasis with people I love amid an irritatingly busy life. Simply having a wonderful Christmastime: we're here tonight - and that's enough. The sound of the song ("Hey, Linda, I just got this cool Casio! Let's get high and make a song!") is now sort of pleasantly, innocently nostalgic to me instead of stupid and grating.

Listen, I'm a fan of contrarian positions as much as the next guy*, but you can take this #slatepitch nonsense and go straight to hell (with love, of course). That song was horrible from the start and age has not improved its charm.

It's the longest 3 minute song in the world.

*wait, does that mean that I'm not a fan at all, because they're contrarian positions, and so therefore the next guy wouldn't be a fan?
posted by leotrotsky at 6:54 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

and the unmitigated disaster of crap his "Wonderful Christmastime" turned out to be.

Musically it might be crap, but I bet it still brings in a lot of money (not that McCartney needs it).
posted by Pendragon at 7:16 AM on December 10, 2015

Paul's problem was that after he left the Beatles, he became unable to write actual songs. He could write some fantastic hooks, but just slapping three different hooks together doesn't make it a song, Paul.


For me, a modern Christmas song should either be a bit sad (as the article suggests, "2000 Miles" is another good example of this), or a bit melancholy and weird.


Otherwise, like the author points out, you had better go old-school and get some pagan imagery up in there.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:21 AM on December 10, 2015

Why are there so many Christmas songs but not a single Halloween or Thanksgiving song?

Is this guy nuts? I could assemble an eight-hour-plus playlist of Halloween songs from my own hard drive alone. Sure, they might not all explicitly mention the holiday, but songs about ghosts, monsters, skeletons, witches, and psycho killers? There are thousands.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:53 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Remember, you don't have to choose between Halloween songs and Christmas songs if you have the soundtrack to "The Nightmare Before Christmas".
posted by foldedfish at 8:14 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I hope this goes without saying, but the Roderick/Coulton album of Christmas songs that he mentions is, indeed, pretty great.
posted by foldedfish at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Forget about "old gods" how about the Great old ones...

The Carol of the Old ones
posted by cirhosis at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2015

Previously on MeFi: If you're not a fan of Macca's version, perhaps the cast of the West Wing singing Wonderful Christmastime will make you come around.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 9:46 AM on December 10, 2015

As if I needed a reminder of the near infinite depth of my ignorance, especially of things that happened before my birth, I had no idea Paul McCartney did Wonderful Christmastime. It's probably not a big deal not knowing. It's not as strange as the time an acquaintance in my age group who doesn't avoid pop culture told me they didn't really know who Bill Murray was even after listing like 20 of his movies. That almost takes dedication.

The Christmas song that irritates me most is in fact Jingle Bell Rock. Not in a ragey way so much as a "oh not this again" way. One of my favorites is Hard Candy Christmas, which apparently isn't 'technically' a Christmas song, whatever that means.
posted by Green With You at 10:13 AM on December 10, 2015

My favorite (secular) Christmas song is Tim Minchin's "White Wine in the Sun," mostly because it's explicitly about the experience of being an atheist during the season but loving it because it's a chance to hold a sacred-to-you space in your year for the people you love.

I'm usually openly sobbing by this part:

And you, my baby girl
My jetlagged infant daughter
You'll be handed round the room
Like a puppy at a primary school
And you won't understand
But you will learn one day
That wherever you are and whatever you face
These are the people who'll make you feel safe in this world
My sweet blue-eyed girl

And if, my baby girl
When you're twenty-one or thirty-one
And Christmas comes around
And you find yourself nine thousand miles from home
You'll know what ever comes

Your brothers and sisters and me and your mum
Will be waiting for you in the sun
Whenever you come
Your brothers and sisters, your aunts and your uncles
Your grandparents, cousins, and me and your mum
We'll be waiting for you in the sun
Drinking white wine in the sun
Darling when Christmas comes
We'll be waiting for you in the sun
posted by sobell at 10:37 AM on December 10, 2015

The actual Christmas song that needs to be written would get right down to the screaming and dirt and cow dung and blood in an animal shed. The mother is only a teenager, maybe 14 or 15, maybe a lot younger. Young as she is, the older husband is probably a tad suspicious, to say the least, of his new second wife given that she turned out to have been pregnant before he got a chance to lay a hand on her. Pregnant by Yahweh, don't you know. Anyway, pregnant or not, they have to load up the ass and trudge all the way to Bethlehem just for a bloody census, and wouldn't you fucking know it, they pull into town and there is not one single fucking hotel room in the whole fucking town because of all the other people coming in on their asses for the same damned census. So man and mysteriously pregnant girl go camp out in a stable to keep their ass company and wait for a room to free up, but, motherfucker, wouldn't you know it, her water breaks and she has to flop down on her back in the straw among the steaming animal shit and swarming flies and just have it where she lies. And then the door-to-door astrologers, navigating by the stars and perhaps quite saddle sore, show up to make fancy gifts to the new god and coo over him when he isn't pooping himself or sucking at one of the girl's breasts. The song has to explain how the hell it all came to that.
posted by pracowity at 11:37 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't mind "Wonderful Christmastime," I just assume everyone in the song is on LSD and tripping balls.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:49 PM on December 10, 2015

An interesting companion article to this would be "How to choose good Christmas songs to listen to". That is because of the cloying conservatism of those who choose the radio and shopping mall selection of festive music we get thrust upon us. Here is the ASCAP list of the top played 25 Christmas songs in the US; here is one for the PRS in the UK. Snow and sleighs and bells and santas aplenty, but none of them, as pracowity brilliantly summarizes above, come anywhere near to being about the birth of a messiah.

For Americans there is nothing on that list newer than the 31 year old "Do they know it's Christmas" (and before that we have to go back to 1970 for "Feliz Navidad". Almost everything else was written between the mid 30s and mid 50s). Brits have Bing's "White Christmas" and Mariah's "All I want for Christmas is you" as 40s and 90s era outliers - but otherwise they are from a world of song writing stuck in the 80s.

Programmers who are driven by an avarice for us to buy more stuff - and a naked fear that we might not - seem to be behind this conservatism. I'm probably not alone in having been driven out of a shop by its decision to blast out this playlist from early November onward. So I'd be interested to see whether the same old songs each year are a good commercial strategy.
posted by rongorongo at 2:29 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is a good point. I seek out Christmas music with intention. Every year I spend a couple hours trolling for free mp3s or samples of new stuff. It's how I've found some of my favorite things. You've got to go beyond the pop radio playlist, for sure.
posted by Miko at 7:44 AM on December 11, 2015