What songs out there are usually traditionally associated with Christmas, that really don’t have jackshit to do with Christmas, but are traditionally played around that time? Not just songs about winter, like “Jingle Bells” or “Winter Wonderland”, but songs that having nothing to do with either.
The two I can think of would be “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music and “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” from White Chrismas. The latter probably because it was in a Christmas movie, but how does “My Favorite Things” translate to Christmas?
Or church music, like Schubert’s Ave Maria. The Ave Maria is simply the Rosary in Latin.
This is highly specific and not really what you were looking for but Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ is very Christmassy for me. Actually I think it somehow reminds me of Narnia (I don’t know how!) which in turn leads to Christmas.
I’m prepared to bet good money that nobody else will think it’s a Christmas song though.
I wouldn’t take that bet, but from now on, whenever I heard that song, I’m going to picture Stevie singing inside a warm home with snow outside the window in the background. Thanks a lot!
I have long maintained (and maybe even posted here) that what we call “Christmas songs” can be divided into 4 distinct categories.
[ol]
[li]Songs about the birth of Jesus. (Silent Night, Joy to the World, etc.)[/li][li]Winter songs (Jingle Bells, Sleigh Ride, etc)[/li][li]Santa Claus songs (Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, Here Comes Santa Claus)[/li][li]Songs about the Christmas season (Silver Bells, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, etc.)[/li][/ol] The type of songs in the OP could possibly be a fifth category, but I don’t really associate any of those with Christmas more than any other time of year.
Well, good point, but as a Catholic, we never considered the Rosary to be especially “Christmasy”, especially considering that the month of the Rosary is October.
My little nine-year-old knees would have been very grateful if the Rosary lasted as long as the Ave Maria.
Just so you know, there’s fifty-three of those puppies in a regulation-length Rosary recitation.
And the first time I heard Baby, It’s Cold Outside was in the movie Neptune’s Daughter, with Ricardo Montalban seducing swimming-pool diva Esther Williams (while Red Skelton tried to protect his virtue from Betty Garrett). Nothing the least christmassy about it. And since they were in South American polo country, I don’t even find it plausible that it was particularly cold outside.
Around here, the public radio station seems to play the Troika movement from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije suite almost exclusively at Christmas tiime. Sleigh=Christmas, I reclkon.
On a classical note, is there anything that ties the Pachelbel Canon in D to Christmas, or even the season generally? The last few years, I’ve heard it nearly as often as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” – that is to say, well past the point of nausea – even though I like the Canon a lot.
Certainly “Let It Snow[sup]3[/sup]” qualifies on the winter-but-not-specifically-Christmas list.
And for the record, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is an Advent song, “Good King Wenceslas” is for Boxing Day (Feast of St. Stephen) in both reference and content, and “Auld Lang Syne” has always been tied to New Years – don’t start playing it the day after Thanksgiving, either the original song or the Dan Fogelburg story song of the same title (which is a change of seasons song, suitable for cross-quarter days).
Guin, there is some peculiar association in the minds of many DJs that “Christmas/Easter is a religious holiday, so if you like a quasi-religious song, it’s appropriate for that season,” even if it has no bloody connection to the season whatsoever. :dubious:
The classical piece In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg has been used in many movie trailers and it seems a fair number of them are winter or Christmas movies. And it sounds (to me anyways) similar to some of the songs in The Nutcracker Suite.
