“Santa Child” belongs on this identical class, I believe. First, items will not be given, however demanded, in a approach that’s unashamed to be materialistic and self-interested. And second, it’s a uncommon vacation track that acknowledges the opportunity of intercourse, and extra particularly intercourse outdoors of marriage, that’s arguably merely transactional. I can’t consider some other Christmas track that does each of these issues.
Q: If there was a spectrum of vacation songs, from wonderful to abysmal, the place would you place “Santa Child”?
A: I’m an ethnomusicologist by coaching, which implies I spend my skilled life writing and instructing college students about music from cultures the world over. One of many basic concepts that I attempt to educate my college students is that I don’t suppose any music is, on a world scale, wonderful or abysmal. It’s extra a query of “what is that this music speculated to be doing, for the people who find themselves invested in it within the context it was made for?” I’ve very sturdy opinions concerning the rightness or wrongness of music relying on context. I’d by no means put “Unusual Fruit” on at a cocktail party, or hearken to Thelonious Monk on the fitness center, although I am keen on each.
So a part of the issue about making a continuum of high quality for Christmas music is that I don’t even suppose that we will agree as a society about what Christmas music is for. For some strictly observant Christians, Christmas music ought to be spiritual music, full cease. Christmas music that distracts us from the sacred observance of the start of Jesus, they could argue, is unhealthy music. (If you wish to discover somebody who might provide you with a sensible, honest argument concerning the basic badness of “Santa Child,” you must ask a member of the clergy, not an ethnomusicologist.).
Then again, Christmas is related to so many particular layers of recollections of years previous that, for lots of People at present, it serves as a form of secular(ish) ritual too. I educate about music’s relationship to ritual in a few of my courses, and I’ve had many college students through the years write rapturously concerning the deep emotional significance of gathering with their household to look at “Rudolph” on tv or singing together with “Frosty the Snowman.” My coaching as a scholar has taught me to take peoples’ household and cultural traditions significantly, whether or not I share them or not. So I’ve a robust inclination to not yuck anyone else’s yum
