Holiday nostalgia helps the oldies stay goodies
Consider “White Christmas,” the classic tune by Irving Berlin which, sung by Bing Crosby, has been an American Christmastime staple for (gasp!) 70 years now.
Consider, also, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” the novelty Christmas song by a duo calling themselves Elmo and Patsy that has been an American Christmastime staple (or something like it, anyway) since 1979.
They’re two vastly different songs, in pretty much every possible way. Yet, both have endured, having become long-lived, much-loved standards in a unique genre of popular music littered with also-ran and wannabe Christmas favorites that didn’t make the grade.
What makes an enduring Christmas hit, one that we embrace every December even as we happily ignore it the 11 other months of the year? Begin, local experts suggest, with the iron-gripped pull of nostalgia.
Granted, nostalgia can play a part in other genres of music, too. Even a mediocre song can become much-loved and fondly remembered because of its association with a high school prom, a former girlfriend or boyfriend or a particularly stellar summer vacation. But it’s at Christmas when the pull of nostalgia can be at its strongest, creating a sort of halo effect upon songs that, in other circumstances, we might consider merely OK.
“I think a lot of it comes from our childhood, when we first heard these tunes,” says Thom Pastor, a musician and secretary treasurer of the Musicians Union of Las Vegas Local 369.
“Maybe we were in the family room, or we were sitting with our parents in the car, and Christmas music is on the radio as we’re going out to visit relatives or going to a Christmas party or to the mall,” Pastor says. “It gets instilled in our fabric, maybe.”
A good Christmas song, like any other piece of good music, “is inspiring or incites the imagination,” says David Weiller, director of choral studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In an enduring Christmas song, there is “a nostalgic element for people that feeds on itself,” Weiller says. “It’s why (people) want to hear, ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire …’ every year. We are attracted to what’s comforting or familiar to us.”
So people feel nostalgic when they hear “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” every Christmas?
Weiller laughs. “Maybe that refutes my theory,” he says.
Successful Christmas songs also tend to have memorable hooks, says Richard McGee, chairman of the College of Southern Nevada’s fine arts department.
“I’m oversimplifying a lot here,” McGee says, “but there needs to be something of a hook, and by that I mean something that’s really easy to remember.”
In “White Christmas,” for instance, “the melody is easy to remember, and the lyric – ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ – sort of helps people to remember that,” McGee says.
A memorable Christmas song’s melody “has to be really poetic,” but also “logical and simple,” McGee says, while its lyrics “need to be easy to learn.”
One possible exception: Religious music, for which we may be willing to embrace more complicated melodies and lyrics.
“If you look at historical religious Christmas music, you have Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ which is almost two hours long, and various Bach works,” McGee says.
Such pieces are complex by design and were written and performed at a time when “people would expect a full meal of music, if I could use that term,” McGee says. “They’d feel cheated if they heard something repeated once and it lasted three minutes. They wanted to be taken on a musical journey, so the length of it is part of that.”
Contrast that with modern popular Christmas songs. According to McGee, the advent of commercial music in the 20th century prompted the writing of shorter works – works designed to fit on the limited space available on record albums – that “sort of covered one mood rather than going for a bunch of different moods.”
“So we get ‘White Christmas’ and ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ ” McGee says “The whole commercial genre (of Christmas music) really is a 20th century phenomenon, pretty much spawned by recording.”
A memorable Christmas song also is likely to benefit from a memorable arrangement that brings out the best in that melody and in those lyrics. Las Vegas singer/musician Ronnie Rose likens it to decorating a Christmas tree.
Just as a tree has its trunk and branches, “you’ve got the lyric and you have the melody,” Rose says. “Then, the tree’s got lights on it. There’s tinsel. Some people like to do the popcorn thing, to bring out individual tastes.”
A Christmas song also can be made enduring by its connection to the times in which it was released. For example, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was released in 1943, but melancholy lyrics – which take the form of a World War II soldier writing to his family back at home – still serve as a template for describing any variety of separation at the holidays.
Pastor says one of his favorite Christmas song arrangements is of “Merry Christmas, Darling,” first released by The Carpenters in 1970.
“That was the Vietnam War,” Pastor notes, and because it has become linked to the times in which it was first heard and its theme of romantic separation, the song “will trigger an emotion” for some.
But the oddest thing about enduring Christmas songs may be that so few of them are of recent vintage.
“I can’t remember, in my mind, new Christmas songs that I actually sing,” says Rose, who has written a Christmas song or two himself. “Maybe that’s because there haven’t been that many great ones written in, say, the last 10 years.”
Singer/musician Frankie Moreno notes that most of the enduring Christmas standards people still love to listen to each year date back to the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.
The reason, he suspects, is that those were the songs on the albums that parents bought and the songs that parents listened to with their kids. Now that those kids have grown up and have kids of their own, they’re playing the same albums and the same songs for their kids.
Just like an heirloom Christmas tree ornament passed down from generation to generation, a Christmas song can “become a tradition,” Moreno says.
On the flip side, that also may mean that singers today who release Christmas albums and record their own versions of the classic standards may be, as it were, sledding uphill.
“I love the old songs. I don’t want to hear Mariah (Carey) singing a Bing Crosby song,” says Moreno, who also has written a few Christmas tunes of his own.
Christmas music is, at its heart, “a novelty genre,” Moreno says. “I love to listen to it. It makes me feel like Christmas. But I like to hear Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra.
“It’s a strange genre. It’s a great genre, but it’s just music that, you must play it every year. Every year you’re going to hear ‘Blue Christmas’ by Elvis Presley, and it’s been 60 years now or more since it’s been recorded. Or, ‘chestnuts roasting by an open fire …’ and it’s 65 or 70 years old.”
“But,” Moreno says, “you’re gonna hear those songs no matter what.”
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@review journal.com or 702-383-0280.
