Christmas Music Tidings
Greetings from the joyful sell-out!
I have not infrequently thought that Christmas releases could be one of the most “sell-out” things an artist could do. Most of it is painful kitsch. My writing mentor years ago also said as much, and even when I released an EP with only the true melodic seasonal classics a few Christmases ago, with unique harmonies and arrangements, he said without hesitation that he didn’t like them “except for the original”—which wasn’t a Christmas song, but a winter song.
But life has a way of unfolding and for an array of reasons, I now have two Christmas song releases out which I’ll link at the bottom of these musings—one of which is with the incredible DJ Robbie Rivera, and the other with an amazing producer out here I know from my record label days.
The most important reason for releasing these, following along the tendency of the now famous bell curve meme applied to ourselves, is that after many years of severe earnestness to counter my more ephemeral teen years, I no longer take myself so seriously again.
It’s been a return the last while to both the earnestness and silliness of my childhood, where I’m not overly concerned with being perceived as a Serious Artist at every turn as many of us are. It’s possible this is made easier by a lot more life experience, credentials, and projects under my belt, but I think mostly it’s a gentle, joyful shedding of undue concern for the opinions of the perceived sophisticated sensibility of others. It’s exhausting for anyone to feel, as many do, that you must always perfectly present yourself or, failing that, explain yourself.
I often speak about the need for serious artists and significantly less mediocrity than we see, and I stand by it. We have a culture to rebuild, and promoting bad art isn’t going to do anything but continue our trend toward degeneration.
But I also think there is an appropriate moment for simplicity, joy, and less overthinking in favour of living life more viscerally and less cerebrally. And if anything, Christmas is that. Too many of those with good minds and talents can become cynical and disqualify themselves from experiencing the simple sweetness of existing.
Life can make us heavy.
This last few years has made most of us pretty heavy—sullen, serious, brow-furrowed, suspicious, hesitant, resigned. And the heaviness is independent of our political leanings: it’s been a hard few years for most, even if you’ve done relatively well while the world seems to be spinning out in chaos. The last 3 years have been wonderful for me professionally, creatively, and in many other ways, but the heaviness haunts me too. I keep referring to all of the world events and the unpredictability, sorrow, and stress they’ve hoisted upon my life as items for the growing “laundry pile.” Others have called it a merciless “firehose” of information and devastation.
We are maxed, tired, bewildered, overwhelmed and desperately need some glints of joy to break through. Our life and sanity depends on this.
Not disconnected from my older opinion of Christmas music, my general perception of most of modern North American Christmas is also that it is kitsch. For these and other reasons, I have not for the most part enjoyed Christmas, except in my adult years as a religiously significant holiday, and then for a few years when I lived in Europe and got to go to the beautiful, longstanding Adventmarkts with mulled wine and roasted chestnuts and homemade knitted garments in front of centuries-old churches, and found something there with more classic depth.
I miss that and wish for more of it in our culture, and the highlight this year for me will be the beautiful religious liturgies I’ll get to attend—which are in no way kitschy, and are only a tremendous feast for the senses for religious and non-religious alike.
But I was surprised to find that at the very moment of Thanksgiving ending this year, the instant, rushed, and often nauseating Christmas lights, music, and decorations stirred not a shred of annoyance in me, but instead the authentic flickers of irresistible joy. And I thought immediately how impoverished so much of our lives have become in the last few years. We seem to have so little real joy. In the midst of a covering of darkness that seems to threaten everything good, innocent, and beautiful, Christmas asserts itself again as an opportunity for unfettered joy, generosity, and childhood—an opportunity for and invitation into the charm and light-heartedness we all crave and touched more or less regularly as children.
It turns out that a little unabashed joy in the form sometimes of, yes, self-consciously imperfect kitsch, goes a long way—because maybe the imperfect kitsch is a sign of the great attempts at love of many, many ordinary, pure-hearted people and the wisdom embodied in these passed-down traditions.
As someone said on Twitter a little while back, as much as many of us bemoan the “Live, Laugh, Love” mass-produced home decor and its attendant memes, something of that way of being keeps families and communities, and thus civilization, together—almost more than anything. It’s good to remember that “I love you,” too, can sometimes seem like a kitschy platitude, and if we aren’t careful, we can lose essences in imperfect renderings.
So, this year? I think one of the best things we can all do is live with unbridled, silly joy throughout the holidays—as much and as long as possible.
Bring out the sequins! Buy the fruitcake! Call your great aunt! Get the poinsettia! Smile at strangers! Go to Midnight Mass! Acquire far too much tinsel! Fill up the stockings! Untangle the lights! Three turkeys! Boxes of chocolates to the neighbour! Bourbon! Candy canes! Wear red! Sing!
So I’d like to propose that I’m not, in fact, a sell-out, but instead a little harbinger of joy in these songs, giving you the freedom to have a much-needed lighter heart this year, too.
The first song is just a fun one my producer friend and I wrote for an ad pitch and which ended up in a LifeTime Christmas movie—and which I released, last year, embarrassed, but in the same spirit of wanting to give joy:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/paxpaloma/wrap-it-all-in-a-bow
And the second is the remake of Silent Night with Robbie Rivera:
Enjoy.
And queue up It’s a Wonderful Life while you’re at it! If the world needs anything, it is Christmas.