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)
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