Darn pesky (((***JOOOOOOOOZ!!!***)))

Why These Christmas Songs Could Only Be Written in America
It was Jewish Americans like Irving Berlin who drew on Yiddish and the rhythms and chords of traditional cantorial music to create our most beloved Christmas tunes.

I love Christmas—the parties, the spirit of charity, the lights glowing on modest row houses, the tree at Rockefeller Center, even the schmaltzy movies. What I really love, though, is the music.

I am Jewish, so you won’t find me dragging a small Douglas fir into my living room. I will not attend midnight mass or keep an advent calendar. On Christmas Day, I eat wonton soup and sweet and sour chicken at a Chinese restaurant, as is my people’s tradition. But the music of the season is a balm and a bop. And it’s not only infectious; it’s secular.

Think of the most beloved Christmas songs, like “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

It’s about winter and romance: “When we finally kiss goodnight / How you’ll hate going out in the storm.” There’s no mention of Nazareth, three wise men, frankincense, or myrrh. It’s warm and homey, but vaguely sexy too. Cheeky and charming, and not remotely Christian. Any American can relate.

Or “The Christmas Song,” with references to Santa, turkey, and mistletoe; it doesn’t feel like revelation so much as cocktail hour. It’s not about Christ. It’s about Christmas.

What’s most surprising, however, is that the Americans who wrote those two Christmas standards—and most of the other seasonal classics—were, like Jesus himself, Jews.

They were often children of parents who fled Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920. There’s Sammy Cahn, who wrote “Let It Snow.” The son of Galician Jewish immigrants, Cahn rose to become Sinatra’s favorite lyricist. There’s also Mel Tormé, the singer and songwriter who, with Bob Wells, penned “The Christmas Song,” more commonly known as “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” His father, William Torma, a Jewish cantor, emigrated from Belarus in the early 20th century. Frank Loesser, a titan of Broadway and Hollywood musicals who composed the slightly naughty “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” was born into a middle-class Jewish family. His father left Germany in the 1890s to avoid serving in the Kaiser’s military.

Johnny Marks gave us “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” a yuletide bubblegum favorite introduced in the 1950s by Brenda Lee. Marks, too, was one of the chosen ones. “He was Jewish and didn’t even believe in Christmas,” Lee told Billboard Magazine years later. “And all that would come out of him was Christmas music!”

“All everyone’s favorite Christmas songs were written by Jews, and this is a fact,” David Lehman, a poet and editor and the author of A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, told me. “The most famous example being “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a bajillion times: I’ll take Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Leiber & Stoller, William Wyler, and Mel Brooks over any thousand poisonous jihadi toads you’d care to name, six days a week and twice on Sundays.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Christmas Day is in our grasp, long as we have hands to clasp.

Yes, not a music clip, I know. What it IS, is the most wonderful moment from one of the most wonderful movies ever made, clean through to its wonderful conclusion, that’s all. Merry Christmas, all!

What better mood-setter for Christmas Eve than some lovely piano music, eh?

Selection Two: mo’ bettah.

Selection Three: my own personal favorite.

Got an outstanding selection of Christmas tunes lined up for y’all this year, most of which haven’t run here before. But no Christmas could ever be complete without these two perennial classics, if you ask me. First up, an inspired mashup by my verymost favorite male chorus of them all.

Next, what happens when members of the top two male vocal ensembles on the entire planet find themselves hanging out in the hotel bar after a concert? A bona fide miracle, that’s what.

Simply glorious. If the above two numbers don’t leave you with a tear in your eye and a lump in your throat, hie thee to a medical facility (or better still, a house of worship) to be checked for a soul. As many times as I’ve heard it, the final “Amen” in that last vid will still reduce me to abject weeping every. Single. Time. Verily, t’is nothing more nor less than the very voice of God Himself.

The previously-promised music vids: first up, a new-to-me tune by offbeat-classical composer Sir Karl Jenkins, from his 2009 release Stella Natalis.

I first heard this one way too early on  Christmas morning, lying in bed in that moggy not-asleep, not-awake state, and frankly, it kinda weirded me out a little bit. After jolting fully awake and recovering from the slight case of the heebie-jeebies it induced, I simply can’t stop listening to it. It’s odd, edgy, abby-normal, not by any means your usual Christmas-music fare. If it had been around back when Tim Burton’s unforgettable Nightmare Before Christmas came out (1993), at least half of the tracks on the Stella Natalis album would have fit in quite nicely for the soundtrack.

Next, one I’d meant to include last week but forgot about: a simply stellar arrangement of one my all-time most beloved Christmas songs.

This one is in heavy rotation on that Irish Christmas-music stream I hipped y’all to last month, and it’s a real beaut. In fact, after repeated listens it’s come to closely rival the powerful Cantus arrangement I’ve run here for a few years running on my own personal bestest-EVAR! list. The backing musical accompaniment is spare as spare gets, unobtrusive yet at the same time indispensable; meanwhile, the intricate, shifting vocal harmonies are so gorgeously lush they make the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. Overall, the above version is so tight you could bounce a quarter off it, so squeakity-clean you could serve dinner on it. The only real complaint I can make about it is that it’s over too soon.

Hey, Christmas ain’t over till I SAY it’s over, dammit!

Actually, I’m thinking I’ll supplant ol’ Scrooge Picard with the regular CF theme this weekend, which is earlier than I usually would. For many years, I made it my practice to adhere strictly to Elvis’s tradition of leaving the tree and decorations up until January 8th, which was his birthday. But since we started earlier than usual this year with the Christmas makeover, well, what the heck.

Update! The instrument that opens the second song, if I’m not mistaken, is not an oboe but the somewhat-rare English horn, which you could maybe think of as an oboe with bigger balls.

What is the difference between an English horn and an oboe?
An English horn and the oboe both come from the same double-reed family of instruments. The main difference is that the English horn is one and a half times longer than the oboe and features a pear-shaped bell that the oboe does not have. Also, they are considered instruments that are alto and soprano in sound, that is, the English horn and oboe, respectively. They are both double-reed instruments, with the English horn having a wider reed than the oboe.

The English horn is an F instrument that also features a wider reed and metal tube that the reed attaches to. The reed is usually tied together with a metal wire. The oboe is a C instrument that has a thinner reed attached to cork and which fits directly on the main body. The oboe has a higher-pitched sound, while the English horn features a more smooth, darker sound. They both feature the same keys and fingerings, and usually, a musician that can play one can play the other.

It can be said that the oboe and English horn were developed in the late 1600s and early 1700s, but double-reed instruments date back to 2500 BC in the city of Ur. With only three or four holes at that time to play notes and double reed, musicians at that time played their music.

The double reed instruments like the oboe and the English horn have come a long way since their beginnings. They are now primarily manufactured in France and the United States of America as well as England. These are where the elite instruments are currently being made for the orchestras of today.

Never having had much interest in the woodwind family of instruments, I’ve never attempted to learn either the oboe or the English horn. They both make truly beautiful music, so maybe that was a mistake on my part, I dunno.