Yuleology

https://www.yuleology.com

[yuleology]

I know it’s too early, but I went into a Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago and they were already pulling out the Christmas decorations and it made me so happy.

Something about seeing the ornaments out just makes me smile, and they make me forget for a moment that it’s 90 degrees outside.

Just holding a Christmas ornament can cool the room down to 30 degrees.

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The extent that music publishers will go to save space on the page is mind-boggling.  There are some choir arrangements that have multiple repeated sections, where you go back here the first time but then skip to this other part the second time, where one extra printed page would have saved a lot of confusion.

I’ve spent so much time talking through the musical layout of pieces in rehearsals over the years, you would think someone would have started a petition by now.

I know we need to save the trees, but surely there’s a compromise to needing quantum mapping to sing a song from beginning to end.

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“Breath of Heaven” is a song about doing something holy while tired and afraid.

If we are honest, that is most of faith. It’s about taking that next hard step, regardless of how we feel.

The carols that admit the fear age better than the ones that skip straight to the joy.

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Christmas music is the only music we allow ourselves to leave behind until next year.  Every other song you love is still available in March, in August, or on a random Tuesday afternoon. 

You have to actually wait for a favorite carol to appear.  The music arrives, fill our hearts for a few weeks, and then goes quiet for 11 months.

The waiting is the whole reason these wonderful tunes are still special to us after all these years.

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“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant;

O come ye; O come ye to Bethlehem!

Come and behold him, born the King of angels!

O come, let us adore him;

O come, let us adore him;

O come, let us adore him, Christ, the Lord!”

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One of the greatest musical architects ever to assemble the sounds of Christmas came up with his most famous work in a July heat wave.

The definitive American snow-ride was built by a man who could not have been further away from snow.

The Invented Winter

Leroy Anderson and the Creation of “Sleigh Ride”

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You never have passed a quiz to learn the words to these Christmas songs. There was no class, no late-night study session.

The lyrics arrived the same way a first language arrives, through repetition in rooms that you loved. You can forget a new password and still nail every line of a carol you learned years ago.

Memory preserves the songs, not the security questions.

[yuleology]

Christmas music can do strange things sometimes. It can make you homesick for a home you still live in, for a year that has not ended, and for the people in the next room.

The longing is not for somewhere else. It is for now, in a moment we can be grateful for.

The ache we feel is just love, keeping an eye on the clock.

[yuleology]

Frosty the Snowman, 1950. Gene Autry sang it one year after Rudolph, and the follow-up came fast enough that the timing tells its own story. Steve Nelson and Walter Rollins wrote the lyrics. They also gave us Peter Cottontail, which is either a fun fact or an indictment.

The word Christmas never appears in the song. Not one time.

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[yuleology]

Stay until the last note of “Sleigh Ride.” All through the piece, the orchestra plays coy: temple blocks clip-clopping, bells jingling, a whip cracking somewhere behind the strings.

Then at the very end, a lone trumpet slides up into a perfect horse’s whinny. The whole piece winks. It was never only a song about a sleigh.

It was the sleigh, and it wanted you to laugh and enjoy the ride.

[yuleology]

Another choir year is in the books. The choir is off in August, and it’s a perfect time for reflection on all the wonderful memories we’ve created.

Music has a way of turning a roomful of different voices into a single instrument.

Grateful for every rehearsal, every phrase, and every moment in between.

[yuleology]

“Do You Hear What I Hear” starts as a whisper with quiet chimes. A night wind speaks softly to a little lamb, quiet and small. Then a shepherd boy hears it. Then the boy tells the mighty king.

With each verse the song climbs higher and louder, as the message continues to grow. Finally the king proclaims to people everywhere about a child who will bring everyone goodness and light.

By the end you are not hearing a lullaby, you are hearing a proclamation.

[yuleology]

Somewhere today a person is driving alone in the August heat with the windows up, playing a Christmas song, and telling no one.

They aren’t confused and it’s not a joke. Some music is medicine, and medicine doesn’t check the calendar.

The season lives whenever you need it to.

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Everyone knows White Christmas, but almost nobody can say why it aches.

It happens right at the beginning. The melody climbs toward the word Christmas and catches on F sharp, the one note furthest from home in the entire key. It leans. It resolves. The whole thing is over before you can name it.

Berlin split the word in half and put the ache on the first syllable. Tension on Christ. Release on mas.

You have felt that half second a thousand times. You have never once realized it.

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“Believe” from The Polar Express, treats belief as something you choose rather than something that happens to you.

That inverts how we usually talk about wonder. Children believe by default. Adults believe on purpose.

The song was never really for the kids on the train.

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There is an art to programming Christmas music at a church. Many dos and many don’ts:

Don’t schedule Christmas music too early (let Advent be Advent).

Do choose interesting arrangements with a unique take on the carol.

Don’t repeat the same hymns year after year.

Do keep Christmas going after the 25th.

Don’t pick only one type of hymn (e.g., only rejoicing hymns or only quieter hymns).

Do blend a mix of the old favorites with some of the lesser known tunes.

[yuleology]

Who do you consider to be the greatest Christmas recording artist of all time?

Do you have a Mt. Rushmore of Christmas artists?