Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Somewhat Less Than Favorite Christmas Music

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... she loves music. Big deal!
Christmas music is wonderful, I love it all except the really cheesy Alvin and the Chipmunks stuff. But there is one Christmas hymn that I have said for years that I just plain do not like. Maybe it's because it isn't really about Christmas. No Christ child, no Santa, not even a snowflake. No sleighbells ring ring ring-a-ling, jing jing jing-a-ling too.
The first three verses are sad, it's depressing, it just gives me the blues - and a Christmas hymn should not do that. It ends well, all the bells are appealing. Pealing, all the bells are pealing. There is a story to the lyrics, they were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during the Civil War. Or the War Between the States, however your history book references read.

Maybe what I have never liked about it was the lack of bells. At Christmas time, there should be bells. And heavenly hosts. And shepherds. And wise men. Especially bells. In this video, the narrator tells the story of how the lyric came to be. I love the story and the choir sings some of the verses. And there are enough bells. There are two bell ringers (bellists?) whose place I would like to have. They are both men, can you guess the posts I would like to have?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I actually like that song. I like all the hope it brings when life is feeling otherwise blah. And according to some friends from the South, it was the War of Northern Agression. LOL