'Tis the Season

by Stephanie Black

A few weeks ago, I got a call from my daughter at BYU. “I’ve done something bad,” she confessed. “You didn’t buy something, did you?” I said. “No,” she said. She explained that she’d been working on an essay for her Spanish class. The essay was about her favorite holiday, or some such topic, and she was writing about Christmas. As she wrote about our Christmas traditions, she started feeling Christmasy and . . . well, you know what can happen once you start wallowing in temptation. She cracked.

She listened to Christmas music.

Before Thanksgiving.

Gasp!

Not that there’s any law on the books decreeing that you can’t listen to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving, but that’s the rule I grew up with, and I’ve apparently instilled it my children, if my daughter’s guilt is any indication. Later, my second daughter cracked as well and there she was in her room, listening to Christmas music on my computer. I had her turn it off because I didn't want to hear it yet. Don’t get me wrong—I really don’t think there’s any crime involved in listening to Christmas music early, and I've been known to do it myself. But I wanted to wait because it’s fun—it builds up the excitement to the big moment, the official start of the Christmas season. It makes it seem more special.

So, despite sore temptation, and setting aside a snatch of Christmas music that I listened to while creating playlists on iTunes, I held off. Granted, I was singing a particular song for weeks, which the less charitable might call cheating, (and my husband thought it was cheating when I listened to Handel’s Messiah, but come on, that’s not just Christmas music and shouldn't be limited to Christmas). But other than that, I refrained from putting Christmas music on the stereo until the morning after Thanksgiving. So what was the first song of the year? It was, of course, The Boar’s Head, from the Chieftains’ Christmas album, The Bells of Dublin. It’s an English Christmas carol from the 15th century, and the Chieftains do it really well. For the first couple of years that we had the album, I couldn’t understand some of the lyrics to that song, but I thought it was just how, you know, sometimes you just can’t understand some of the lyrics of a song, like in an old John Denver song where he sings the words “rocky cathedrals” and we could not figure out what he was saying, and we finally looked it up in a songbook—this was in the days before Google. Anyway, when my daughter printed out the lyrics last year, it all became clear—some phrases from The Boar’s Head are in Latin, which would not have been an impediment to Kerry, but was a bit incomprehensible to me. Quot estis in convivio, and all that.

In keeping with the lyrics-I-need-help-translating theme, this year we’ve adopted a new song into our Christmas lineup, a very catchy traditional song called El Burrito de Belen, performed by Colombian singer Juanes, of whom my daughters are extremely fond. Belen means Bethlehem; burrito, apparently, means young donkey, which I didn’t know. All this time, I thought a burrito was something involving beans and tortillas and, for the lucky few, Café Rio. By the way, if anyone wants to trade, I’ll trade you an In-N-Out for a Café Rio. I like In-N-Out, mind you, but mmm . . . Café Rio.

Another of my favorites in the Christmas music lineup this year is the Christmas Songs album by Celtic ensemble Anuna. Clear, ethereal voices, gorgeous harmonies.

So when do you start listening to Christmas music? Do you wait until after Thanksgiving or do you, like stores, have it playing in October, or possibly while you set off fireworks on the Fourth of July? And do you have any recommendations for awesome Christmas songs that I should add to my list?