Enjoying the Yuletide, I once spent three whole days listening to a local rock station which every December becomes “your Christmas music station.” For me that was a big mistake, for amongst the overplayed tawdry tinsel songs were… no Christmas carols at all. I clued in: That nice station, in our secular society, has a policy against carols. Three days wasted.
Of course secular songs lift my little heart —“… run, run Rudolph… whizzing like a Sabre jet…” (1958)— but carols expand my chest with exaltation. Back in elementary school we sang them with joy, and I memorized the words to sing during my long two kilometre walk home (1 and 1/4 miles).
As a child, I wondered why that story by Charles Dickens, with the three ghosts, could be called ‘A Christmas Song.’ But I know now that during a church lecture the preacher may say, “…And so ends the second carol.” It means “lesson.”
Hence the songs teaching us to remember tidings of comfort and joy… so triumphant.
If you are an immigrant reading this, then you might innocently be thinking that the surrounding majority all know these things. Not so— they can’t even define carol. That’s why for the evening cartoon special A Charlie Brown Christmas, a producer insisted that Linus recite a Bible passage to explain. I watched that TV show, with my brothers, back when it first aired. Children enthused about it the next day at school. This was a few years after the statistical high tide of church attendance here in North America: 1962.
Today I suspect that if a person of a different religion is offended by folks walking down the gayly decorated streets giving warm salutations of “Merry Christmas,” then he or she may be lying to themselves, lying about their fear of being converted into changing religions and becoming Christian. My best guess is that often the actual fear goes unspoken: They don’t want to assimilate into being a non-churchgoing, nonreligious person like the rest of our “Christian” majority, a majority that is perfectly content with being secular.
And eager, while creating Yule entertainment, to tweak things to make them fresh. That song (1958) about the little drummer boy? “Pa rum pum pum rum”? That boy’s not mentioned in the Holy Bible. Neither are the three spirits that Dickens wrote of in 1843.
As for ghosts, when I was a boy there was a scary movie on our old black and white TV about a man who kept Thirteen Ghosts. (1960) His housekeeper was a witch. In those days the film would pause for a half hour to allow The six o’clock news with Walter Cronkite. The movie was so scary that during the break, over supper, my brother Pat asked Dad, “Do you believe in ghosts?” (No) Pat earnestly explained that one would while watching that movie!
“One would while watching.” Not the next day. As for Hallowe’en ghosts, I have no problem with a Buddhist or a Jane believing in, and enjoying, spooky ghosts while observing that special evening. The next dawn brings All Saints Day, hence the dark creatures deserve their own night out. Another thing the majority doesn’t know: when I was a boy, everyone put an apostrophe between the two “e’s” because the word in full was “All Hallowed Evening,” referring to the next blessed day.
Again, I have no problem with a Hindu or an atheist, amidst the festive season, singing “Hark the Herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.” In the Commonwealth countries, the next dawn brings Boxing Day, which is not a day we sing about, but that’s fine. And six days later we shall all be “believing” in a man-made ending to the year, as the globe spins heedless of humans, a year than somehow spins an extra day every fourth circuit. Well, it’s all a social construct, isn’t it?
“I believe I can shout, as I drive off with speed, ‘Merry Christmas to all, of each race, religion and creed!’” Yes, including the creed of “godless communism.”
And from up on my roof, stringing lights, drinking rye, I could happily shout to diverse passersby, “Let us eat, drink and be merry!”
And sing!
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Sean Crawford
Calgary,
Christmas Eve,
2024
Merry Christmas Sean!
Happy New Year!