Just saw a message in another forum I frequent. Mother whining that her daughter’s “Christmas concert” didn’t include any songs about Christmas. They sang about winter, and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, but no Christmas.
I just had one question for her: What makes you assume it was a **Christmas **concert?
Any school kids getting up on stage to sing in December gotta be singing about Christmas? Why? Hate to break it to ya, mama, but there are a lot of holidays in December and if they have enough songs about the other ones and the winter season to fill up a concert, them’s the breaks. Better luck next year.
Maybe now she begins to get the idea how all the Jewish and pagan and nonreligious kids (and their parents) felt all those years when the singers were hittin’ 'em over the head with Jesus.
(My kids’ grade school music teacher threw in the towel when she was politely informed that a “holiday” concert that consisted, year after year, of mostly Christian religious songs, with the same two Hanukkah songs and a couple of secular songs wouldn’t cut it.)
Hmmm… without wanting to be too snarky, it does sound just a little odd… I mean, it’s not as if Christmas is some obscure festival celebrated by just a handful of weird guys with long beards; it’s pretty much entrenched in western culture (and yes, I’m assuming this to be generally the case in not downtown, Burbank). A children’s concert in December, featuring songs about religious winter celebrations, but conspicuously omitting mention of Christmas - sounds just a tiny bit like the omission was calculated, but I may be wrong.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with deliberately not including Christmas songs - it’s only entertainment after all and I don’t see that anyone has any claims to equal time, but it looks like someone’s bias might be showing a bit. Maybe not, but maybe.
Sounds to me that the woman is being paranoid. It’s perfectly possible to programme a handful of winter songs, and not even realise Christmas isn’t explicitly mentioned in any of them.
It may depend upon how one defines a “Christmas” song. Take a look at this set of songs:
Jingle Bells
Frosty the Snowman
Jingle Bell Rock
Let it Snow
Sleigh Ride
Winter Wonderland
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Every one of those could make it onto a “Christmas” program, and are commonplace among the all “Christmas” music rotation on the radio right now. Not a one of them has anything to do with Christmas–they’re winter songs (which, ironically, tend to be played mostly during the fall).
I seriously doubt that ALL of them felt any particular way. However, I think that maybe now you begin to get the idea how good it feels to get your way. That’s what makes your observation so tea-spittingly funny — you are wallowing in what you condemn.
Well, let’s be honest here. Kids have been doing Christmas concerts, in December, since time immemorial. If you hold a concert in December, it’s reasonable to assume you’re continuing that tradition. It’s like walking into a Starbucks, ordering a large, and being asked if you mean “tall” or “Vento-grande” or whatever the hell. Come on; in a four-size system, the second largest is the Large. Some assumptions make life easier.
That said, so what if there were no Christmas songs? Big frickin’ deal. I went to a CATHOLIC school and I can remember at least two years when my class’s contribution to the Christmas concert wasn’t at all Christmas themed.
You know, now that I think about it it is kind of weird. They had religious songs if they were singing about Hanukhah, and some “Christmas” songs are really nice, like We Three Kings, or Joy to the World.
And singing about Kwanzaa and not Christmas? That’s even more confusing.
This was my first thought reading the OP. What songs are sung for Kwanzaa? And if the songs are glorifying a religious holiday, why not expect a Christian-themed song or two?
Most important though, I’d really like to know what Kwanzaa songs there are.
*It’s Kwanzaa time in Hollis, Queens
Mom’s cooking chicken and collard greens
Rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese
And *<radio edit> put gifts under Christmas trees
Regarding Deck the Halls. This doesn’t necessarily say it’s a Christian song, but it is generally accepted to be a Christmas song, and not a Winter song as it once was.
I think I may have actually figured out how to do nested quotes. I’m a little slow about stuff like that.
Back on topic, does Ding Dong Merrily on High really not mention Christmas? The words I recall to Ding Dong Merrily on High, follow to the next line being “Christmas bells are ringing”. Have I been singing it wrong all these years?
I’ll give you a big “Amen on that Brother” or whatever.
I’m sick of hearing my neighbors practically spit the words “Holiday Party” and “Winter Concert” as if something has been stolen from them. I guess they didn’t notice the Jewish, Muslim, and Mormon, etc., kids in their own child’s third grade class- you know, the same one’s who have been sitting there all year.
I just sat through one of my loudmouth neighbor’s “ungodly” tirades on this very subject. I’ve lived here for 3 1/2 years. Not only is his rant getting repetitively tiresome, but it’s never. once. occured to him that I don’t share his views and I don’t feel particularly inclined to share them with his as I’m afraid he’ll go all Deuteronomy 13 on my ass.
I liked this quote form an MSNBC article today:
“So the silly annual examples are trotted out, the schools that censor Christmas carols, the townships that insist that the evergreen decorated with lights is a holiday tree. No one searches his soul about how we came to this pass. It has little to do with separation of church and state or liberal politics and everything to do with the way the blunt cudgel of Christianity has been heedlessly used, the tyranny of the majority. After years of Jewish parents’ sitting through school concerts listening to the words “It is the night of our dear savior’s birth,” maybe oversensitivity was inevitable, since any other kind of sensitivity had been in short supply.”
