Merry Christmas, everyone.
It's Christmas morning here in Denver, and I'm listening to my third carol service in three days on BBC Radio - more a freak of the time I've put the radio (computer) on than a planned activity: I have somehow caught Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass, and Christmas Day services while doing morning exercise, making dinner, and grumpily drinking my morning coffee respectively.
Well, I like listening to carol services as an antidote to the weeks of awful popular Christmas music in supermarkets. But after three services, I am driven to record my three most hated carols.
1. Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
I never even knew how much I disliked it until this year. It brings to mind Victorian Gothic, all that over-decoration, piousness, chastity and colonial pride. And it goes on forever. I especially hate that last chorus with all of those soaring triumphant sopranos above the main chorus line. Grotesque!
2. O Little Town of Bethlehem.
Eugh! Eugh! Skin-crawly cloying sweetness! Victorian faux-simplicity! Somehow I remember liking this when I was young, probably because it wasn't Away in a Manger but was easy for children to sing.
3. Away in a Manger.
Same cloying nature as O Little Town of Bethlehem, with a particular added dose of nauseating syrup for the fact that we were always made to sing it at primary school, presumably through adults' love of juxtaposing sweet little children with a Christmas song about sweet little babies in cribs. "Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes" is the worst possible line - patronizing and delusional - and the melody drones and drones (especially when sung by sweet little children).
But it does have the line that most puzzled me through my early childhood:
Stay by my side until morning is night.
It's Christmas morning here in Denver, and I'm listening to my third carol service in three days on BBC Radio - more a freak of the time I've put the radio (computer) on than a planned activity: I have somehow caught Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass, and Christmas Day services while doing morning exercise, making dinner, and grumpily drinking my morning coffee respectively.
Well, I like listening to carol services as an antidote to the weeks of awful popular Christmas music in supermarkets. But after three services, I am driven to record my three most hated carols.
1. Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
I never even knew how much I disliked it until this year. It brings to mind Victorian Gothic, all that over-decoration, piousness, chastity and colonial pride. And it goes on forever. I especially hate that last chorus with all of those soaring triumphant sopranos above the main chorus line. Grotesque!
2. O Little Town of Bethlehem.
Eugh! Eugh! Skin-crawly cloying sweetness! Victorian faux-simplicity! Somehow I remember liking this when I was young, probably because it wasn't Away in a Manger but was easy for children to sing.
3. Away in a Manger.
Same cloying nature as O Little Town of Bethlehem, with a particular added dose of nauseating syrup for the fact that we were always made to sing it at primary school, presumably through adults' love of juxtaposing sweet little children with a Christmas song about sweet little babies in cribs. "Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes" is the worst possible line - patronizing and delusional - and the melody drones and drones (especially when sung by sweet little children).
But it does have the line that most puzzled me through my early childhood:
Stay by my side until morning is night.
2 comments:
Morning is nigh?
Yes, as I discovered much later. But why doesn't anyone think to explain such things when you're a child?
Merry Christmas beaniebretthauer and all Bretthauers!
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