Silver and Gold

The other day I finally did what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time – take off all of the music on my iPhone and replace it all with christmas music.

I consider myself to be fairly fond of Christmas music. I am always excited for Thanksgiving to be over so that the music can start to come in and I can enjoy myself for the month of December. It’s part guilty pleasure, part fascination, and part nostalgia.

So needless to say I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music, particularly on my walks to and from class. It’s given me a lot of time to really think about what it is that I’m listening to, why I like it so much and why it has injected itself into our mass culture to the extent that it has.

Within the whole of Christmas music, I have a good deal of fuzzy memories. I remember the family gatherings during the holiday breaks, I remember a christmas tree and for some reason I remember being warm. Very warm. The warmth that is stifling and unbreathable, and yet at the same time entirely safe. I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to breathe.

But to dig deeper than pure nostalgia, the music fascinates me because it is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness. Pop music does this to an extent, too, but not with the width of Christmas Music. Where else in our culture do so many people share a knowledge of such an extensive songbook? People who don’t celebrate Christmas, people who do, the old, the young, the different. We all know these songs. And (I’m sure) some people don’t want to know the songs. But you can’t avoid them. They are everywhere. Christmas has invaded our culture so much that Sava’s has a huge Christmas tree up and doesn’t stop playing Christmas music and I don’t think twice about it. Christmas is an institution, a huge monolith of power and cultural presence. Christmas is about values and about togetherness but Christmas is also about the pressure of culture. It is about commercialization and capitalism and faux-values preached by public figures and about this ambiguous large man in a red suit who invades your home, steals your food, leaves gifts, and runs away with magical flying deer. It’s an absurd institution that is entirely and brazenly secular, despite its intense religious connotation for many, many people. Christmas is an institution born of religion, but that has now gone to college and rejected its parents and got a moehawk because it thought it was edgy.

Of course, Christmas means something different for everyone and everything. But. You know.

And then there is the music. An emblem of the season but also an institution within itself. An exclusive group of accepted holiday songs that are covered and repeated and sung and caroled and mutilated and ripped and sewn back together. It is music, it is the man, it is false nostalgia and it is real nostalgia. It is an immovable obelisk of money and fame and real passion and fake passion. Christmas music is the victim and the perpetrator of its own bastardization. And that makes me love it.

I think of the new Sufjan Stevens Christas box set and its epitome – the magical song “The Christmas Unicorn.”

I’m a Christmas unicorn
In a uniform made of gold
With a billy goat beard
And a sorceror’s shield
And mistletoe on my nose

Oh I’m a Christian holiday
I’m a symbol of original sin
I’ve a pagan tree and magical wreath
And a bowtie on my chin

Oh I’m a pagan heresy
I’m a tragic-al Catholic shrine
I’m a little bit shy with a lazy eye
And a penchant for sublime

For you’re a Christmas unicorn
I have seen you on the beat
You may dress in the human uniform, child
But I know you’re just like me
I’m a Christmas Unicorn! (Find the Christmas Unicorn!)
You’re a Christmas Unicorn too!

It’s all right. I love you.

And to all, a good night.