I’ve been thinking about Christmas music.
When I was a little boy and Christmas came, my mother would sing me to sleep:
Away in a manger, no crib for his bed,
The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.
When I got to church as an adolescent, I already knew the carols that saturated our entire culture: O Little Town of Bethlehem, Joy to the World, and to close every Christmas Eve service, Silent Night, Holy Night.
BECOME A FREE SUBSCRIBER TO I’VE BEEN THINKING
When the music got more serious, there was the musical pinnacle of our season of celebration: Handel’s Messiah.
But as I approach another Christmas, I must admit that all this traditional music holds more boredom for me than inspiration. Endless repetition and familiarity have robbed it of its sacred purpose. So I find myself searching Pandora for songs that may seem less sacred but still capture my imagination. They are the gift I offer up to you in what continues to be a holy season for me.
Joni Mitchell is one of the great lyricists in popular music. She never wrote an actual Christmas song, but this one about heartbreak is as close as she came.
The River (Joni Mitchell)
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm gonna make a lot of money
Then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry
He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on
William Butler Yeats wrote one of the most important poems in the English language in 1919, in the rubble at the end of World War One. With his family’s permission, Joni Mitchell set it to music.
The Second Coming (William Butler Yeats)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday was written in 1942 as a part of the first movement of a suite entitled Black, Brown and Beige. This is his arrangement, with the great Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson.
Come Sunday (Duke Ellington)
Ooooh...
Lord, dear Lord above,God almighty,
God of love,Please look down and see my people through.
I believe that God put sun and moon up in the sky.
I don't mind the gray skies
'cause they're just clouds passing by.Lord, dear Lord above,
God almighty,
God of love,Please look down and see my people through.
Heaven is a goodness time. A brighter light on high.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
And have a brighter by and by.Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, Please look down and see my people through.I believe God is now, was then and always will be.
With God's blessing we can make it through eternity.Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, Please look down and see my people through.
Thanks for reading I’ve Been Thinking! Subscribe for free to receive new essays directly to your email inbox as they’re published.