“Carol of the Bells” should be an amazing song. It is literally about bells, and bells are nice. It has foreboding descending harmonies that prompt feelings of pensiveness and badassery. It relies heavily on chilling onomatopoeia, giving me an excuse to sing the objectively funny phrase “ding-dong” with complete impunity for the duration of the holiday season. “Carol” has all of the makings of a good song. But it’s not an amazing one, because, like so much Christmas music, it is corny as hell.
Mulling this question over far more than any human should has meant that I’ve not only listened to an insane amount of Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Mannheim Steamroller over the past few days, but also come up with a few working theories about why Christmas music is so herbaceous.
Time Crunch and Covers
We’re going to assume that “the holidays” start on the first day polite society deems it acceptable to drink eggnog: the day after Thanksgiving. Tack on a few days to make it to November, December's 31 days, and the first week of January, after which holiday cheer expires (unless you’re celebrating Orthodox Christmas or something, in which case, more power to you). All things considered, you’re looking at a six-week window to enjoy Christmas music, unabated and unchallenged.
But we live in a society that values one thing above all else: money. Christmas music makes lots of it, and if you can produce a reliable hit, you’ve secured the bag for decades to come. But not all songs can hope to be “All I Want for Christmas (Is You),” with its jingle bells and relentless piano trills. It’s a modern pop standard that you can argue is kitschy — but you can’t deny it’s popularity isn’t unique. Conversely, not every rendition of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” will have a sweet, jubilant holiday warmth. Sometimes, it sounds broken. This goes doubly for many a misguided “Hallelujah” chorus, and it’s already weird enough that it’s a Christmas song in the first place.
That brings us back to the issue of time. Tying to promote a new Christmas song in a very tight six-week stretch is a gamble. Given what we know about the economics of holiday music and shopping, it would make sense that The Deciders wouldn’t want to try anything too far outside of that norm. And yes, on any given new release of the Christmas music persuasion, you will probably find some original songs.
This Vox explainer on Christmas albums provided a solid sample: the ten best-selling Christmas albums of all time. And you know what you find? A whole lot of covers doing the legwork (alongside some original tunes). Since Christmas music gets pockets on swole, I’d gander to say this balance is kind of an industry standard. And a whole lot of Christmas covers aren’t very good — and possibly lazy. For every awesomely self-aware Kenny G record, you’ll get a kinda weird Josh Groban “Panis Angelicus” and no fewer than 35 dozen instances of Pachelbel’s Canon.
Choose Your Genre Fighter
“Mock Language” is a linguistic phenomenon that describes speakers of one language who use words and phrases (or gibberish) from another in their native tongue, usually to disastrous effect. Think “Cinco De Drinko” or any “namaste”-related pun. And for these purposes, think Christmas music, too.
The nifty thing about Christmas music is that choosing a record to play is not that difficult if you just want to set a mood. So much is made to appeal to fans of specific genres, and then a song leans all the way into the necessary defining markers. Want an R&B Christmas Album? Get ready for an overemployment of vibrato. Jazz? Prepare yourself for arrangements that embrace vapid heads and uninspired solos, but generally work because they sound “jazzy” enough for your holiday cocktail party. And the Classical Crossover Industrial Complex has a field day (month?) around Christmas — the results are arrangements, both vocal and instrumental, that can sound pitifully earnest.
Christmas music no longer needs to try. The holiday is such a cultural touchstone, a behemoth that can drive you broke if you’re not careful, an atmosphere so pervasive that you cannot escape it even if you care little to nothing of a wee baby asleep in a barn with a teen mom and a highly suspicious dad. Christmas music is made to pump energy into that atmosphere. The music produced doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be facsimile enough of something popular that you feel compelled to stream it in the background.
Corny ≠ Camp
When I talk about corny, I’m not talking about “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” a song about a Grandma who got extremely tipsy off the noggin’ at a holiday party and was subsequently run over by a Reindeer, because that song is funny, as far as novelty songs go. “Santa Baby?” Certainly a little bit weird, but a pleasurable listen nonetheless. But “Carol of the Bells” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Puzzling and heavy-handed.
Nothing really starts out corny; corniness is status conferred. It’s also not to say that you can’t legitimately like corny things. I like my dad’s sense of humor. I like the Kurtis Blow “Basketball” music video. At least one person likes Cory Booker. But what all of these things have in common is an unnecessary earnestness — the minute you beg to be taken seriously is the minute you stop being taken seriously. And that’s the problem with this “Carol” arrangement, which might be a microcosm of corny Christmas music.
“Bells” is just one example, but I could easily have talked about this version of “Mary Did You Know” (a song which I never heard the same way after a Priestly friend shared this article with me), or this “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Or that “Santa Baby” cover where Michael Bublé makes it his life’s mission to let you, dear listener that you are, know that he is 100% not gay. All of these songs beg you to recognize their self-perceived cool, and sacrifice their own self-awareness in the process. Or, they try to class it up with an “edgy” or “ancient” selection like “Dona nobis pacem,” which in playlists, to me, has always sounded hilariously out of place between John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and that one incredible Boney M. song.
If Thanksgiving’s most tired take is that turkey is a Bad Meat, then this is the Christmas corollary. Turkey isn’t inherently bad — you or whoever cooked it is probably just bad at making it, because there is really only one day in the entire calendar year when you get a shot at preparing one. Christmas music isn’t inherently corny, it’s just that so many songs are corny because they’re holiday rush jobs.
In my opinion, this is the only piece of Christmas music writing that really matters. And after you read it, you’ll realize that Christmas music can be truly amazing. Do yourself a favor and throw on “Coventry Carol” or “O Magnum Mysterium.” Or some Corelli or Billie Holiday. Maybe you just need to save your soul and listen to “Player’s Ball.” Or, just download this playlist I made of Christmas music that is good and awesome and not corny at all.
Or maybe ... just a little bit.
