In addition to Christmas
Eve, today is Erev Hanukkah. So I believe something a little less…orthodox is
in order. And what’s less Orthodox than Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song”?
(Whatever that is, I don’t
want to know about it.)
Sandler has updated the
lyrics several times in the decades since he sprang this song on the world. He
now recounts (among other things) that “Joseph Gordon-Levitt enjoys eating
kugel; So does Stan Lee, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the two guys who founded Google.”
When it comes to classic Christmas films, there are plenty: Miracle
on 34th Street, How the
Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas
Story, Die Hard, about 235 versions of A
Christmas Carol… But last year I stumbled upon one that’s become one of my holiday
favorites: A Very Murray Christmas.
Yeah, it’s not for
everyone, but I’ll pretty much watch Bill Murray in anything. Plus: Christmas.
The schtick is that on
Christmas Eve, Murray’s in his hotel in Manhattan, waiting to broadcast a live
show (hello? Scrooged?), which he
needs to do for the money. But a blizzard of Biblical proportions strikes,
screwing everything up. He can’t cancel, but…well, a whole lot happens
(including a power failure) and he, his crew, a wedding party, and miscellaneous
flotsam and jetsam end up in the hotel bar, doing what you might expect in a Manhattan
bar during a blizzard on Christmas Eve.
There’s drinking,
crying, fighting and singing. All the usual elements of holiday festivities.
The piece I truly love
is the ensemble’s cover of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”. There’s something
about this collection odds and sods, primed by either tequila or slivovitz (or
both), coming together to sing about broken dreams, lost opportunities and old
drunks that just speaks to me.
The “Sans Day Carol”
comes to us from 19th Century Cornwall. It’s similar to “The Holly
and the Ivy”, but I kind of like this variant better. Sometimes. Sometimes not.
It depends.
Here’s the English early
music group Carnival Band performing it. I like this version because it hasn’t
been interfered with by John Rutter, and that’s hard to find these days.
It’s the Winter Solstice
today—the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Humans have been marking the turning back of night around this time for
millennia—celebrating the resurgence of light and hope over darkness and
despair. Because no matter how black and cold it might seem at this moment,
they know that the seasons will revolve; spring will follow winter; there is
life beneath the frosted landscape.
The English poet
Christina Rossetti wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter” in 1872, although it wasn’t
published until 1904. A couple of years later it was set to music by Gustav
Holst and became the carol we now know.
The imagery of the first
stanza just makes you shiver—earth hard as iron; moaning, frosty wind; water
like stone; snow piled deep on itself. It’s a frozen world, an absolutely
perfect description of the Winter Solstice. As Rossetti goes on to describe the
mother and child, the stable beasts and the angels, you can just about see
their breaths billowing misty into the night air.
It seems appropriate for
today, and here’s one of my favorite a capella groups, Chanticleer, singing it.
Let’s return from the
Old World to the New, and have something with a bit of a Caribbean flavor.
The first time I ever
heard “Mary’s Boy Child” must have been Harry Belafonte’s version. But ever
since my first watching of the Carnegie Hall Christmas broadcast some time in
the 90s, my heart on this has belonged to Kathleen Battle, Frederica von Stade,
Wynton Marsalis and the Boys Choir of Harlem.
Yeah, okay—bleat about
cultural appropriation some other time. I just love this, so here it is.
Today’s piece is a little on
the long side (just shy of 30 minutes), but it’s worth the time, if only for
the sake of putting aside all the mania that envelopes us in the last week’s
run-up to the Big Day. Put down the icing gun, the wrapping paper, the grocery
list and the 16 things you have to get done at work before hitting the road to visit
the ‘Rents—just leave it all for half an hour and let the music of Benjamin
Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols” wash over you.
Britten wrote this piece in
1942, for the Soprano-Soprano-Alto voices you hear here with harp. Later on, he
arranged it for SATB, but this configuration is out-of-the-ordinary, so I’m
going with it. It’s a collection of individual pieces, ranging from the
Medieval to 17th Century, which he only later decided to frame
together with the unison processional and recessional.
Like yesterday’s
piece, “A Ceremony of Carols” was composed during World War II. In Britten’s
case, it was on the transatlantic return to Britain after three years in America. Imagine what that journey must have been like, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. But Britten created both this piece and his "Hymn to Saint Cecilia" on that voyage.
I find Britten a bit of a
stretch (like
Schoenberg). But I’m grateful that the traditions can take stretching like
this, and find new ways to deliver on the beauty. See what you think.
It’s the Sunday before
Christmas—a full week away, but already many of my colleagues have taken off to
head out to wherever “home” is configured in their world. Family, friends—eh,
family. They’re most likely going home to family, whether it’s the home of
their childhood, or the places where their families have shifted since those
long-ago times.
One colleague will be on a bus
from D.C. to family in New York. I asked if he takes one of those
Chinatown-to-Chinatown jobbers that used to charge something like $5 for the
trip. He said not, but my question prompted tales from other colleagues at the
meeting who had done. Evidently many of the drivers used to be Russian, and one
would spiel quite the patter, including offers of friendship, if you’re short
of friends.
Another colleague is headed to
Raleigh-Durham for a few days with her sister and in-laws, and then down to
Wilmington, where her parents have retired. She likes Christmas on the water,
and having spent one Christmas in Wilmington, I do see its charms.
Especially with family.
So today let’s have a song
about coming home for the holidays, one
that dates from 1943, when people all over the world were dreaming about just
that wonderful thing. They were hoping with all their hearts that loved ones
would return from the unimaginable carnage of the Second World War and be
surrounded by the healing warmth and plenty and love that only family could
provide.
There are many covers of “I’ll
Be Home for Christmas”, from Bing Crosby to Rascal Flatts. I like Bette Middler’s
phrasing, so here’s hers.
If you’re traveling home for
the holidays this year—or only dreaming of it—safe journeys with joyous
endings.