Ryan disagrees with my Christmas rock boosterism. I’ll just go ahead and quote the whole post:
I have to tell you guys, I am not a fan of Christmas rock songs and/or modern interpretations of old Christmas stand-bys. Why is this? I donât know. Pretty much the only departure from Burl Ivesâ old school standards Iâll tolerate (love actually) is Vince Guaraldiâs Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Although I do like the Velvet Fog doing âA Christmas Song.â
This may have something to do with a deep sense that Christmas is actually a celebration of the past more than anything elseânot something to be modernized. Or it could just be the long, looooong list of abominations resulting from contemporary acts doing Christmas songs.
Naturally, I feel differently. To me the Christmas standards don’t feel so much classic as they do dated. They were a part of my childhood, so of course I enjoy listening to them for the sake of nostalgia. But I think that it’s wrong to consider them as the ur-Christmas songs. “Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Winter Wonderland”, “Rudolph” — those were the songs that constituted a departure from the past, as song & dance men cranked out superficial, secular story-songs in tandem with the rise of the Christmas-Industrial complex.
In some ways I think the best of the new songs actually harken back to the pre-ditty era of Christmas music. Not because they’re reconnecting with the holiday’s religious aspect, but because the songs are able to tap into a pool of surprisingly universal experience. With partial apologies to my Jewish friends, there are plenty of emotionally resonant aspects to this time of year that we’ve all felt: wintery quiet, loneliness, warmth, grandeur, joy. I won’t sit here and pretend that Maybe This Christmas XXIV brings tears to my eyes, but it’s likely to be a hell of a lot more artistically successful than a song about a magical snowman.