Festive Music
Just thinking this morning about how I love the feel of this time of year – the anticipation of Christmas, the warm weather, days at the beach or dips in the pool, picnics in the evening, even the busyness of the shops and everyone racing around can be cool if you just sit back and take it in and not get swept up in the stress of it all. I like the decorations of shops, houses, the city, even cars now sporting reindeer antlers! But most of all I like the music – a strange mixture of old-time crooners, archaic hymns, and other cheesey songs that any other time of the year I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to. But at this time of year I love it – dragging out my collection of Christmas MP3s and playing them any opportunity I get. And I like the fact that you can walk around the shops and hear songs about Jesus, even if no-one seems to be paying any attention to it.
It goes without saying that Bing, Frank, Dean, Nat, and Elvis are essentials. I also love country styled Christmas music (I’m a big Brad Paisley fan and his Christmas album is tops!) And old style rock Christmas – Beach Boys, Jackson 5 of course! Not forgetting all the big pop music Christmas hits – John Lennon, David Bowie, Band Aid (which 
features one of the stupidest lyrics in history “there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time” – like that’s the reason we should feel sorry for them? Hello! Most of the world won’t have snow for Christmas. If we ever have snow here I’ll be seriously worried about climate change!)
The other day I was trying to explain to my kids how this is the only time of the year where it’s okay to enjoy Neil Diamond (the rest of the year he is verboten) – and the same goes for David Hasselhoff (his Christmas album is one of my many guilty pleasures). I’m afraid I can’t stretch that rule to include Streisand – her music is still taboo all the year round.
I won’t delve into the massive topic of Christmas novelty albums other than to mention Christmas in the Stars – the Star Wars Christmas album from 1980. I can only force myself to listen to this once each festive season it is so awful. It mostly features C3PO, Chewie, and R2D2 but on one of the songs you can hear a young Jon Bongiovi in his first recorded appearance. It’s bad, although not quite as horrible as the Star Wars Holiday Special TV show (which words cannot describe just how execrable it is).
Anyone else have any suggestions of Christmas music – good, bad or otherwise??
Finally, while we’re on the topic of Christmas, here’s a cool video we had in church yesterday – SC vs JC
Tags : carols, christmas, music, star wars
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