Christmas Carols In Old America

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CHRISTMAS ORIGINS

It may be hard to believe but Christmas is actually a pagan feast. It was actually rather a feast reserved to wizards and witches that used to dance around a tree or, much more likely, around stone circles on the winter solstice day, that is on 22 nd December. It was an orgiastic celebration, with dances, grass and sex, to propitiate the favor of the gods in the winter period, that in ancient times was really frightening.

Its origin? Some say it came from Druids culture and it had Celtic roots. If any of you has ever read Asterix and Obelix comics can, in a funny way, get a gist of it, even though these people’s esoteric tradition was much more complex. The period is from IV to III century B.C. and the place is the British islands but with expansions to as far as Italy , Iberian peninsula and Sweden. We know them as BRITONS and the Stonehenge mystery is what probably tickles us more of their past, rather than their religious traditions. Yet all the Christmas magic and enchantment we still feel today derives from these extinguished people.

Romans, that defeated Celtics and colonized their territories several times, absorbed their customs and traditions and that was how the winter solstice feast became a tradition of the Empire. The celebration of Winter solstice was actually present in several cultures: in ancient times natural cycles were well observed and the fact that the shortest day, and therefore the seeming abandonment of the sun, occurred around 21 st of December was a well known phenomenon, but not considered “automatic”. The sun was a life giver god; and as all gods he was prone to excesses, grudge and acts of violence. Therefore men needed to get in good with it, so that it continued to donate its warmth. The days immediately following 21st of December were therefore lived with terror and fear by ancient people, especially when light got inevitably weaker and nights longer. Man could be confident that the sun was back and that a new year was beginning for humanity only on 25 th of December, a day when, for a series of astronomical laws that I’m not going to explain here, the sun seems to be born again, powerful and victorious.

In a few words there’s a new birth. This simple interpretation can maybe explain the success of the festivities linked to winter solstice that we find in several cultures throughout the world.

When Romans “recycled” pagan dances they were reinventing the wheel. And after them the Christians did the same. Joining fetishes representing Christ and the virginity of Mary to the pagan dances, they were actually connecting to much more ancient myths and customs. The Madonna with Child is indeed not a Christian heritage.

In Egypt, for instance, 2000 years before Jesus birth the god Horus (the Sun) was portrayed as a child in the arms of the goddess Isis (the Moon) who was a mother and sister. Even before that in Persi the myth of the god Mitra should make us think: it seems that he had been given birth by a virgin, he had twelve disciples and above all he was called “The Savior”! The Babylonian sun god TAMMUZ is not less surprising: he was also portrayed in the arms of the mother goddess ISHTAR, he had a halo made of twelve stars, representing the twelve zodiac signs. (12 like Christ’s disciples, don’t you think?) It seems that he also died and resuscitated after 3 days… and this in 3000 B.C.

I won’t talk about the horrid Dionysian rites, where a child god was literally cut into pieces by women who had gone insane, to be born again more beautiful and strong than before; and I just touch on a sun god in the Yucatan, he too was given birth by the virgin CHRIBIRIAS . But I would like to highlight that the rites that took place in the winter solstice were not present only in this hemisphere, but in the other one too, as even Incas celebrated the sun god WIRACOCHA on their winter solstice, that is on June 24th!

PICTURE 1) Here is the extraordinary correspondence between the goddess Isis and the Christian Virgin. There are several similarities: we’re struck by the central role of the two figures in both the pagan and then Christian religion. They were both considered mortal, virgin and linked to the figure of the “Savior”, Horus for Isis and Christ for Mary, who were portrayed by classic iconography as the child held in the arms and breastfed by the woman.

So it’s the same the whole world over. And the whole world cheerfully celebrated a Christmas rich in dances and songs between a sexual intercourse and a drink, until Christianity came to upset the apple cart . It started of course to forbid the sex and the amenity of the festivity, that didn’t match Mary’s image of purity ; it was then the turn of the dance, considered a “Devil’s gift” . Finally pagan songs were substituted, as they still praised strange divinities of the past, mixing them with the Christian ones.

The first to provide an original text was, in 129 A.D., the Roman Bishop, who forced the believers to sing a HYMN OF THE ANGELS at Christmas; not to be outdone, the Orthodox Church, through a certain Comas from Jerusalem, created a HYMN TO THE DIVINITY in 720 A.D. Thereafter writing religious texts to sing at Christmas became a real profession reserved to the monks. The date of Jesus birth was fixed on December 25th in the 4th century to oppose the several winter solstice celebrations that still existed . Actually no Gospel refers to an exact date when it talks about the Nativity. Jesus was born and that’s all. Theologians got the idea from the census, letting pass that Romans had a real passion for the count of their subjects, often for planning and control reasons. Replacing the pagan festivities with the birth of Our Lord was therefore a brilliant master stroke.

Yet the people did not appreciate immediately this change: life was too short and hard to let one of the few moments of debauchery of the year be taken away. Condemned to the fast and to a sober lifestyle, the new Christians had found comfort in folk songs, that had the merit to be sung in the mother tongue, easy to understand and learn for everybody. The Church indeed forced the mob to learn Hymns in Latin by heart, and celebrations were led among sad and measured people that struggled to mumble words they did not understand.

Many early Christian bishops opposed this state of things, like St. Ambrose for instance, who even adapted the text VENI, REDEMPTOR GENTIUM to folk songs of pagan origins so that people, even though they didn’t know the text, could at least croon the song their own way. But these were isolated cases. With anathemas and threats of excommunication the Catholic Church managed to create a real musical anthology that was imposed on people and lasted until the Middle Ages. And for sure not for everybody’s joy. At the beginnings of 1200 people had lost the will to celebrate Christmas and the birth of our Lord passed by among apathetic families, whose only transgression was finally eating a piece of meat, after the long fasting of the Advent . One of the most attentive Saints and a reformer of the Catholicism, St. Francis of Assisi, realized it, and he thought of restoring the ancient cheerfulness to get the people closer to the Heaven.

Well understanding the difficulties of the poor people, he created a sort of living celebration of Christ’s birth, with a shed and characters that, differently from what is usually believed, did not stay there motionless, just to be admired, but used to sing traditional songs, that had never died, with flutes and bagpipes, telling shortly the story of the Nativity. It was a whole week of preparation for Christmas with games and competitions, as well as prize contests for the yearly staging of the best nativity scene . The highlight was on the December 25th, when joyful dances took place both in the open and, if weather did not permit it, inside the church, debunking the belief that the dances in honor of our Lord were sinful. It must be said that at first the Church did not like this innovation but Francis’ fame of holiness was so pure and uncontaminated that the Pope let it go, even because this joyful custom had arrived to France, Spain and Germany and it was such a publicity for the Christianity that forbidding it would have been like shooting himself in the foot.

PICTURE 2. Francis took often part to the Christmas plays, placing in the middle of the night a newly born child in a crib and celebrating at the same time the Holy Mass. This way the mysteries of Jesus’ Birth and Mary’s Virginity were taught to ignorant people in a simple and effective way.

So, beside the church hymns that were strictly sung in Latin, in Europe Christmas began to be celebrated with carols in vernacular, that were more and more accurate and complex, spread around by minstrels and shepherds, who taught them to the people . The word CAROL, that indicates exactly the secular song linked to Christmas with dances and feasts, is French. We have no written proofs of the first Middle Ages popular carols, as they were spread orally and scholars did not transcribe them at all.

The oldest one we know comes from England, is dated 1470 and it’s the very first version of I SAW THREE SHIPS . England was the leader of the Christmas carols, with enthusiastic and well organized people that cranked out the first solo singers, called WAITS (i.e. those who wait). And they waited all year long as they went around several villages, accompanied by musicians, bringing the Christmas music and living on alms. They were the first street artists, and when they arrived to a village they brought cheerfulness together with The Good News . When Christmas was closer they went back to their own village, accompanied by the notables who sang with them in public.

PICTURE 3. One of the most widespread customs in the English Middle Ages was the Christmas celebration with big banquets, whose main course was a living peacock . This beautiful bird was killed and carefully skinned, so as not to ruin its plumage, it was then stuffed with eggs and spices and roasted. It was finally “coated” with its own skin and adorned with gold. Once the Pilgrim Friars arrived to America they almost immediately replaced the peacock with the turkey, which became the culinary symbol of the American Christmas.

So the Waits became WAITNIGHTS, as they, wearing shepherds clothes, stayed out singing all night long looking at the stars, reminding the first shepherds that crowded Jesus hut. That was for sure not a healthy custom, as climate was frigid, and this probably encouraged the creation of the first wooden nativity scenes, around which whole families gathered in vigil at Christmas night or even all the people of the village, when the scenes were life-sized . A big farm was found for these “giant scenes” and suddenly physical and spiritual health were protected at one fell swoop . This tradition grew so intense that Churches in Europe geared up to allow people to celebrate Christmas with their own songs too. There was therefore a period when, even though the mass was said in Latin, folk choruses were added to canonical ones, and, as they narrated Jesus birth in vulgar, were not considered sinful anymore. So happy people crowded the churches that shined with the lights of thousands of candles, as needed: doubly happy indeed, since once candles, made of tallow, were out they were given as presents to the hundreds of hungry believers who … ate them right after the service! Yes, life was hard in the Middle Ages!

Time for Christmas cheerfulness was anyway short: the Inquisition in Spain and Italy was harsh towards carols and dances, considered devil’s temptation for the flesh and therefore once again forbidden and fought. Germany and England, embracing the new surge of Protestantism, made people plunge in the strictest austerity. Even the very Catholic France, now oppressed by sovereigns of Spanish origins who swooped there for political marriages armed with crosses and rosaries, lost its dancing tradition. In these dark times people didn’t forget Christmas carols, that were sung in fact in private as a protest especially in England, despite Cromwell and his strict puritan laws that had brought austerity even to the American colonies.

A scandal dated 1730 was reported by Reverend Mather, who complained about a “deplorable custom” in the Massachussetts Bay Colony where, at Christmas night, people “played cards, guzzled at the table and sang very vulgar carols about Jesus birth!”. A trend that set in more and more and that, like every self-respecting tradition, had hundreds of minstrels as heroes, as they had collected all Christmas folk songs from the motherland, in spite of the English laws, before disembarking to the new continent and spread them there! The custom of the WAITS was then not only dusted off but also better organized, with real preparations of scenes that, with the coming and going between England and America, went back to the start. Most of the old Christmas carols we’re still singing today, like “Stille Nacht” or “What a Child is This?” were indeed written in the second half of 1700.

The way was paved, the great Powers adjusted to that: in 1822 the member of parliament and historian DAVIES GILBERT publishes an anthology of Old Christmas Carols, and right after him WILLIAM SANDYS publicized some historic songs, like THE FIRST NOWELL or HARK the HERALD ANGELS SING . The final stroke was given in the Victorian Age when the very puritan Queen, who covered the table legs with a skirt out of modesty, marries the Teutonic and handsome Prince Albert.

He was a lover of the old Christmas music and worked hard to organize again the Festivities setting them free from the loop of the “funereal celebration” and give them the former glory . A secular Christmas was therefore born and it spread like wildfire throughout the world, and people were looking forward to it. Since then, beside nativity scenes and decorated trees, carols have been enriching themselves with new symbolisms that mark the changing times. Snow, mistletoe, reindeers and Santa Claus come into scene, drawn generously from traditions of countries which are often little known, and become public heritage at least at Christmas.

Christmas carols became a real business for cinemas, record labels and TV stations. Thousands of authors got rich writing real successes that still make us cry and dream, like WHITE CHRISTMAS OR THE CHRISTMAS SONG.

Then, like it happens for everything, this current dried up and the market changed. Today everything we listen to at Christmas is simple reworking of songs of the past, and the few novelties don’t make history. Traditions are lost, Festivities are just a cold trade and it looks like people have lost the will to sing too.

How come? Where’s the Christmas Spirit gone? Have we lost it maybe?

ROCKING AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE

A…modern Christmas!

Let’s start our review of the most beautiful Christmas songs from a song with a captivating melody, a light text and a definitely important author.: Johnny Marks, one of the few composers of Christmas songs who rightfully entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame..

From the thirties to the beginnings of the sixties writing Christmas songs was almost a profession . Some authors specialized in this field that, especially after the invention of the TV, was much followed, advertised and loved. Every year tens of Christmas authors proposed their works to the record companies. Getting them recorded by famous singers was a guarantee of success. America, both catholic and protestant one, has always loved Christmas. Bing Crosby , who really wrote many songs, became a favorite of the public with White Christmas and thanks to this popular song became an authentic star. From the thirties to the forties, the period of swing, jazz and a still baby rock, Christmas songs were sparkling, happy and with dancing tones. It was only later on, in the fifties, that they became more melodic and suggestive, fitting better a dreaming and prig society, to which the revival of the good feelings represented a certain type of traditional family. However, Rocking around the Christmas tree brought a gust of joy and dynamism, but still keeping the recall to the harmony of the domestic heart that was so dear to the American people.

Here is the text.

Rocking around the Christmas tree

At the Christmas party hop

Mistletoe hung where you can see

Every couple tries to stop

Rocking around the Christmas tree,

Let the Christmas spirit ring

Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie

And we’ll do some caroling.

You will get a sentimental

Feeling when you hear

Voices singing let’s be jolly,

Deck the halls with boughs of holly

Rocking around the Christmas tree,

Have a happy holiday

Everyone dancing merrily

In the new old-fashioned way

PICTURE 4. Here is the cover of the original record of 1958, with a childish and smiling Brenda Lee. The record, produced by Decca, was quite successful. The singer, thirteen year old at the time, was on the wake of the new born rock and roll but still winking to the tradition of the family Christmas . She was the only interpreter of the song for almost thirty years, she was then outdone by the 1987 version by Kim Wild/Mel Smith, that reached the third place of the English Hits of the year . We still have in mind the rock version of the then chaste Miley Cyrus, that in 2006 caught the attention of millions of spectators.

As you can see that’s a text that looks light at a first sight but it presents interesting sparks . The word rocking introduces the rock suggestion, as it had already happened for another, maybe more famous, Christmas song: Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms . The presence of the rock, even though without its usual hardness, was a brand new thing for the Christmas songs and, strangely enough, was welcome even by the very traditional old generations, who saw in the new born rock a symbol of the decay of the society. Was it the magic of Christmas?

FOTO 5. A child prodigy, Brenda Lee started her career at the age of 6, reaching the first place in a school talent show, whose prize was a live exhibition on a very successful radio program, Starmakers Revue . Her family was very poor and thanks to the several exhibitions of the child on the local radios managed to make a living . She was very short, approximately 4ft9, but her voice was so gushing that she earned the name of “Miss Dynamite”. She didn’ t obtain the success with Rocking Around the Clock but with I’m Sorry of 1960, that earned her the Grammy Award. People considered her a pop singer but Brenda Lee was a famous representative of rockabilly and rock’n roll, one of the very few women at the time .

The song is actually immediately “forgiven”, as it underlies the standard themes of the tradition: the kiss under the mistletoe, the happy voices, the spirit of Christmas and… - a masterful touch!- the union old-new, quoting the refrain of the very famous DECK THE HALLS, a song that was the symbol of the average adult American . The piece was composed by Johnny Marks in 1957 and DECCA let it sing by the then 14 year old Brenda Lee , who recorded it twice, in the 1958 and 1959. It seems that the song at the beginning had a more country style but it was then adapted to the Lee vocal and singing characteristics . It was a successful experiment, if we consider that the Brenda Lee recording was almost the only one for this song!

Johnny Marks ( 1909-1985) had started his career as Christmas songs composer in 1947 with the song Rudolph, the red-nosed Reindeer , based on the poem of the same name written by his brother Robert.. It was an unprecedented boom that earned him rights for 30 million copies and that in 1964 gave birth to a much appreciated TV movie of the same name! The song was also recorded by Gene Auntry , a very famous singer of that time.

Director of the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers) from 1959 to 1961 and founder of the equally famous ST. NICHOLAS MUSIC in 1949, he wrote many songs that I invite you to listen to. I just mention some of them: THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1952) then interpreted by the magical duet Gene Autry-Rosemarie Clooney, another star of the period, RUN, RUDOPLPH, RUN (1958)interpreted by the rock icon CHUCK BERRY, I HEARD THE BELL ON CHRISTMAS DAY (1956) an opera that takes place during the civil war and that had many important voices such Harry Belafonte, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and many more. In conclusion a lot of beautiful music that is worth listening and remembering.

For the record: Johnny Marks was awarded by the International Society of Santa Claus with the CHRISTMAS SPIRIT prize together with another great composer: Irving Berlin , author of WHITE CHRISTMAS and other beautiful songs we will talk about in one of the next chapters.

PICTURE 6. Here is a mature Johnny Marks in an almost intimate picture of the seventies.

The song was recorded in the July of ’58 in one of the Decca offices with the Nashville producer Owen Bradley. It was one of the most muggy summers of the last years and the singer and the orchestra didn’ t manage to concentrate. Owen then set the air conditioning to the maximum and made shoot artificial snowballs to cool the air, he set up a big Christmas tree, with balls and colored lights, in the recording studios, to get a Christmas atmosphere for the singer and the whole staff. It seems that the idea worked perfectly and everybody had lots of fun, to the point that two only recording sessions were enough to finish the single. In 2014 the NPR, interviewing an old Brenda Lee, asked her playfully in what direction one should rock around the Christmas tree . The answer of the singer was immediate: ”South. Following the path of the sun”. Even though he had Jewish origins, as his famous colleague Irving Berlin, Johnny Marks reached the fame as a composer of Christmas songs. In one of his many interviews he openly confessed to the question if he was happy of his success: : " Well, I’m not very happy to be remembered just for some Eve’s folk songs! "