Mods may feel free to move thnis thread to IMHO or MPSIMS if they see fit.
This came to mind the other day. Many of the most popular “Christmas” songs (like the ones I cited in the title of this post) have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. Rather, they’re songs about wintertime fun, playing in the snow, cuddling up by the fire, etc. (I could add many other songs, like “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!” or “Sleigh Ride”).
Now, I understand why nobody sings “Silent Night” or “Joy to the World” once Christmas is over, but these other songs I mentioned remain perfectly relevant as long as it’s still winter. So, why don’t you EVER hear anyone singing (or any radio stations playing) “Winter Wonderland” or “Frosty the Snowman” in January? Why do you never hear “Jingle Bells” or “Sleigh Ride” in February, when lots of people are still taking real sleigh rides in the snow?
And any minute now, I expect him to make something horrible happen to WLTW 106.7 FM in New York, which started being all-Xmas a week before Halloween…no exaggeration!
If you really stop to think about it, many of the songs that we commonly think of as “Christmas carols” really are not about Christmas, per se. I think that every Christmas song could be place in one of 4 categories:
[ol]
[li]Winter songs. Songs such as those in the OP that talk about snow and winter.[/li][li]Songs about the Christmas season. Songs like I’ll Be Home for Christmas, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, Silver Bells, etc. Songs that talk about the “trappings” of Christmas.[/li][li]Santa Claus songs.Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Up on the Housetop, Rudolph, etc. Songs about the Jolly Old Elf and getting toys.[/li][li]Real Christmas carols.Silent Night, Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, etc. Songs that celebrate Jesus and his birth.[/li][/ol]
I know this is GQ, so I won’t add my own personal commentary here.
Among popular Chrismas carols, are there none other than these five that qualify as “Winter Songs”, i.e. songs that do not mention Christmas, or reference Christ/Nativity/Santa:
Frosty the Snowman
Jingle Bells
Let it Snow
Sleigh Ride
Winter Wonderland
I know it’s difficult to prove a negative, and “popular carol” is a subjective term (Does “Over the River and through the Woods” count?), but it’s a trivia question I ask every December…
Maybe people wouldn’t be sick of them if they didn’t start playing them before thanks-fricken-giving!
[Soapbox] If I were king, any radio station that started playing Christmas Songs more then a week before christmas would have those responsible for the breach forced into a sensory deprivation tank for a year with nothing but the most annoying christmas songs playing nonstop.[/Soapbox]
At the risk of showing my age, that’s pretty much what radio stations used to do. Starting after Thanksgiving (or December 1st), they’d sprinkle in the occasional Christmas song into the usual non-holiday-oriented playlist but not really go heavy on them until a few days before December 25th. Of course, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would be all holiday music.
I never noticed that Christmas music disappears on December 26. To the contrary, it’s always seemed to me that the appurtenances of other holidays, like Halloween, exhibit the phenomenon of completely disappearing on the next morning. Just as most people keep their decorations and trees up for several days following Christmas, so does the music seem to taper off gradually during that time.
I have no particularly strong feelings for or against Christmas music, but always felt it was ludicrously stupid to sing or play ‘Frosty’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ in Southern California.
Er, the obvious answer: because shopping season is over.
At one point, Christmas was a period of time, days, not just one day of getting gifts. Nowadays, the music you are talking about: that as played by commercial businesses, serves no purpose post-christmas. People have already bought their gifts and are not going to be motivated to buy more via that holiday anymore. So the music goes away in preparation for othre ways to get people to buy stuff.
You might also include “White Christmas”, too. A corollary of my statement above, about ‘snow’-songs being stupid for L.A. is that to us they have no other meaning than as Christmas carols, so we lump them in with the religious ones, and those about Santa.
Name one song that is played frequently to commemorate any season.
In summer, do you hear “June Is Busting Out All Over” every day in the grocery store? Or even “Summertime Blues”?
Do you hear “Autumn Leaves” in Macy’s every October?
You only hear winter songs at all because they are just riding on the coattails of Christmas, not because people are overjoyed to be in the midst of winter weather.
As much as I’m not a fan of the show, I’ve got to give credit to “Freestyle” the new afternoon drive-home show on CBC radio. They put it to a listener vote when they’d start playing Christmas music. The vote came in: Dec 12 I believe (the vote was a choice amongst three dates, that being the latest)
What about those songs which have nothing to do with Christmas except for the use of the word? “I saw three ships come sailing in”, for instance, is a traditional carol, but bears no particular resemblance to any of the traditions surrounding Jesus’ birth. Likewise “Do you hear what I hear”: The King didn’t tell the People Everywhere that the Child would bring Goodness and Light; the King tried to have the Child killed. “The Holly and the Ivy” (admittedly usually only heard in instrumental form), in so far as it connects with any holiday at all, is probably more about Easter than Christmas (since the imagery is plants returning after the thaw). And yet it’s traditionally a Christmas carol.