Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I don’t know what the first Christmas song I ever learned was, but I’ll bet it was “Jingle Bells”. This song is such a basic old chestnut of the season that you wouldn’t think a lot could be musically wrung from it at this point, but here are three interesting takes on it.

 

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I’ve had a really busy day, so I’ll just keep it short and sweet. This one needs no introduction whatsoever, right?

 

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A Fine Addition to the Overall Discourse

I saw this video on TikTok the other day, and it amused me greatly. As the Official Self-Appointed Curator Of Internet Content Pertaining To Overalls, I am compelled to share it here.

Her name is Lani Baker Randol, and she is apparently a model and content creator from Texas. Personally, I think her outfit here is terrific–the overalls pair wonderfully with that striped button-up she’s wearing–but I would like to ask her husband, What trains is he riding?

Moving on….

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Speaking of my friend Robert John Guttke, he also loved the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams’s eternally-fascinating blend of modern symphonic sounds and instrumental writing, combined with his fascination with English folksong and melodies dating back to the Elizabethan era, appealed to Robert on an almost instinctual level, and I know Robert loved this work in particular, the Fantasia on Christmas Carols:

This next work isn’t specifically a Christmas selection, as used by Vaughan Williams, but the tune has been re-lyricized many times into a Christmas selection, which is how I justify its use here: the famous Fantasia on “Greensleeves”.

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Yesterday was Frank Sinatra’s birthday, so here’s Dean Martin!

(With Frank Sinatra.)

Well, you can’t stop with just one bit of Frank, so here he is with Bing Crosby:

And here’s Frank all by himself.

 

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas!

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire….”

Such a strong and evocative image of Christmastime…and yet, I’ve never once tasted a roasted chestnut, nor have I come close to roasting one on an open fire. But that’s not my fault:

Hopefully we manage to get the chestnut tree population back in sufficient supply that I can still someday find out what a fire-roasted chestnut tastes like! Meanwhile, here–and I cannot believe I’ve never featured this classic in this space until now–is Mr. Cole.

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas!

It’s that time of year again: the annual debate over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie!

My personal opinion is that this one’s easy: yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. But a friend on Facebook made an interesting argument against Die Hard‘s Christmas status the other day, and I want to tease it out a little more. Basically his view is that there is nothing intrinsically Christmas to Die Hard, at least not in the same way that Christmas is intrinsic to Miracle on 34th Street (his example). Basically, my friend argues that you can’t have Miracle on 34th Street take place any other time of year, where Die Hard actually can take any time of year.

Now, I’m honestly not sure about my friend’s argument. I mean, Miracle on 34th Street does seem to require Christmas, but I’m sure you could tell pretty much the same story at some other time of year, though it would definitely require quite a bit of heavy lifting in the writing department to make it work. And could Die Hard take place any other time? Sure. Obviously it could. Hans Gruber and friends could just take over the building on Easter Sunday, or July 4. As I noted to my friend, I’ve seen Die Hard set at another time of year. It’s called Die Hard With a Vengeance.

My problem with my friend’s argument is that it’s deeply limiting as to what constitutes a “Christmas movie”. Does a Christmas movie have to involve Christmas to such a degree that it literally can’t take place any other time? I don’t think so. Die Hard isn’t just set at Christmastime; it intrinsically involves a lot of emotions that come to the fore at that time. Family concerns. Redemption. Getting home for the holidays, safe and sound. Are those ideas unique to Christmas? No, but they are most certainly central to Christmas. So, could Die Hard take place at some other time? Sure. But the Christmastime setting gives it a subtext that engages the emotions, doesn’t it? Die Hard has a lot going for it as a movie: it’s extremely well-made, a virtual masterpiece in its genre, but a lot of action movies are well-made. It’s the emotions that keep it so re-watchable now, 35 years or so after it came out; the Christmas setting is part of how Die Hard gets us to care about its characters.

So I would argue that yes, Die Hard is most definitely a Christmas movie. I also argue that the first Lethal Weapon movie, also set at Christmas, is a Christmas movie, for similar reasons, even though LW doesn’t push the Christmas subtext quite as hard as Die Hard. Still, LW makes Martin Riggs’s redemption and his finding meaning after his wife’s death one of the major emotional subplots, and that is very much informed by Christmas.

Now, how about Die Hard 2? It also takes place at Christmas! It’s also about getting home, and all the other stuff, isn’t it? Well, that one I think has less of a claim as a Christmas movie than the original, but for me that’s more because in that respect it doesn’t do much new with the Christmas theme from the first film. And that’s interesting to me, given how inventive and fresh Die Hard 2 actually is. That movie does not get enough credit for not repeating the first movie.

There’s another way for a movie to be a Christmas movie, but it’s a more nebulous one: it’s our own associations. Ultimately it’s up to us to decide what’s a Christmas movie, isn’t it? The Sound of Music has become a Christmas tradition, even though its story has nothing to do with Christmas at all. (On a more limited note, “My Favorite Things” has become a staple of Christmas songs, and there’s nothing about it at all that’s intrinsic to Christmas.) For me, My Fair Lady is a Christmas movie, because I watched it the first time right around Christmas and that’s just the association I have with it. And my beloved On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which takes place at Christmas, is absolutely a Christmas movie. And I’ll bet there are a lot of families who always watch some completely non-Christmas movie every year at Christmas, because of one tradition or another, so for them, that movie is a Christmas movie.

There are many ways to be a Christmas movie, and I think that’s a good thing. So: in conclusion Your Honor, I insist that Die Hard most certainly is a Christmas movie, and that therefore the score to Die Hard, composed by the wonderful and dearly-missed Michael Kamen, is by extension Christmas music. That being the case, I close with this suite.

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Is there any mode of transportation that lends itself to the magic and mystery of Christmas better than the train? If there is, I don’t know what it is. Nobody gets wistful about the Christmas Airplane. The closest competitor is undoubtedly the sleigh, but even that’s pretty specific. Nobody gets misty-eyed as they contemplate the Christmas Hay Wagon.

Here’s some train stuff. First, a compilation of Christmas trains!

A specific train here: the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train from last year. This looks like quite the production.

Chicago also gets in on the act, with a special train on its famous El converted to Holiday duty:

Want to feel like you’re on a train when you’re nowhere near one? Here’s some ambience for you!

Or this:

I’m a big fan of ambience videos on YouTube. I often have one playing in my workplace.

And finally, some actual music, because the Daily Dose is still a music feature! Here’s an annual favorite of mine, a suite from Alan Silvestri’s score to The Polar Express, a movie that I like a great deal.

 

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Over on the Substack…

…I wrote more at length about my mother.

Please read. And subscribe, if you’re so inclined.

 

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

One thing I make sure to do every year while putting this feature together on a daily basis is to find stuff I’ve never heard before. Christmas music is such a huge genre that it seems a pity to only stick to the favorites we’ve known forever, because at some point every one of our favorites was a song or piece we’d not heard before. Sometimes you remember the first hearing–I still remember when I first really heard Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne”, for instance–and sometimes you don’t, but there really was a time when we didn’t know “Jingle Bells”.

This piece by Edward Elgar is apparently one of his most obscure works, but the tide must be turning in that regard because I turned up a passel of recordings and performances of it! This one I like a great deal, as it couples a wonderful performance of a gentle, beautiful song with a short film that’s shot wonderfully. Elgar wrote “A Christmas Greeting” for a choir in Hereford, apparently setting words written by his wife. The piece has been rearranged quite a few times for other ensembles; this performance turns it into a lovely chamber work for violin, piano, soprano, and tenor. I’d never heard this before just this morning…and now, here it is!

 

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