I live in Bucharest, Romania, but I was born in Constant(z)a.
“Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 AD from Rome to Tomis (now Constanţa, Romania) by decree of the emperor Augustus.” (source: Exile of Ovid - Wikipedia) When you read Ovid’s complaints about the harsh winter weather, you can think he may have been exiled in Siberia or something. Of course there is snow in Constanţa every winter, but that city lies in the south of the country. Over fifty percent of the Carpathian mountains lie in Romania, and we really enjoy frosty winters here. I won’t get nostalgic, but my childhood teems with snowy experiences.
My daughter and some large group of children (I won’t go into too many personal details) are preparing some event for Christmas, and she asked me what song I suggest they should include in their repertoire. I didn’t know “White Christmas” is the world best-selling single, but that’s what I recommended her because it’s my favorite Christmas song. (I’ve never believed in Santa, but I enjoy Christmas.)
When my daughter mentioned the song, she was surprised how quick people were to reject it. “It’s too racists,” they said. She tried to explain that the white snow in the song has nothing to do with any ideology. “Look,” somebody chimed in. “It’s enough that I do things ‘white’ every day of the year. I don’t want this to spoil my Christmas too.”
It’s an international group: Romanian, British, American, and international kids. Mostly international. I advised my daughter to refrain from making further comments. I told her it is for a good cause, but she asked me what that cause was and I found it hard to identify it exactly.
Well, from a British perspective, ‘White Christmas’ has no racist connotations whatsoever, so I don’t imagine the comments came from the British children, unless someone else planted the idea in their heads.
Can someone please explain the racist connotations? Is this like when that little old woman in the bus berated two latin-american girls for speaking about un vestido negro (a little black dress), the kids thinking that “white” refers to “socially-acceptable to WASPs” rather than meaning “snowy”?
Every year, the 3rd-grade students in my college go on a student trip, which they get financed through different activities; the year I was finishing my classwork (we also had to do a thesis), the 3rd-graders came up with a Christmas festival. Each class could enter two songs, prizes given in three different categories. My class won Best Classic with Silent Night (in half a dozen languages, each sung by those students native in it) and Best Execution for White Christmas (thankfully I was able to explain that the Ts in “glisten” and “listen” are mute before my classmates managed to trip themselves all over them). It’s been… gah, that long? and people still talk about the surprise when, after singing White Christmas a capella, all dressed in white tunics (traditional perforated bedsheets), when the white light and the music had faded off completely and someone finally started clapping
every non-white light in the place came on, the white tunics came off to show off Those Sweaters, and the whole song was repeated with every traditional instrument ever invented by Spaniard plus the two electronic organs set to the tinniest settings we’d been able to find, and sung With Swing and with the most timid redhead in the world getting so worked up that she walked up to the stage lights and got everybody except that sourpuss Espeso to stand and clap along with her. I’m! drea!min!ofawhite! christ!mas!..
Sounds to me like they are unfamiliar with the song, and just associate anything non-material being described as white as being about white people. It also sounds like the concept of wishing for a snow-filled Christmas is not a thing in their culture.
I congratulate you on telling your daughter just to not bother with it. The good cause is just “it’s not worth making other people upset just to be able to sing a song that I like. It doesn’t matter if we agree with them.”
My daughter has a strong personality and I’ve always advised here to avoid conflicts so that she can make and keep friends. She enjoys having friends. So, the good cause was to be non-conflictual in the name of friendship, like usual.
I also suspect that the song hasn’t been picked because it may be too slow for some of those children’s tastes, the issue with its ‘whiteness’ being just a pretext. I’m not sure. I just want my daughter not to worry about anything and I am tired of conflicts - there seems to be a potential conflict lurking around any corner lately.
That’s sounds like a lot of fun, and fun is an end in itself.
Although I praise fresh perspectives, I also like to follow the original spirit of a song and I feel that in the case of ‘White Christmas’, speeding it up would result in pretty much ruining it. There is a category of songs where playing them at a quicker pace would turn them into rubble. Sing Sheryl Crow’s ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ faster and you’ll get a caricature. I listen to modern music every day, but rap has never been my cup of tea. Because you can’t really hum a hip hop song, can you?
And most of those I can’t, the speedy part is more of a recitative.