It’s the day before Christmas Eve. Finally! When the seasonal ads start the day after Halloween, whatever joy I might have gotten when I first saw them has dissipated.
Tomorrow is a Sunday, which means church. But tomorrow evening is the night before Christmas, which means church. It reminds me of going to some churches with very long services back in the day.
The Wexford Carol – Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss -My wife has a lot of Alison Krauss CDs. We saw her perform with Union Station in Albany back in 2003. Krauss is one of my wife’s “K girls,” along with Diana Krall. But this song is on a Yo-Yo Ma album, on which he performs with about two dozen other musicians.
Star Carol – Simon and Garfunkel. This song appears on the S&G box set.
Getting Ready for Christmas Day – Paul Simon. Simon is sampling a sermon from 1941, the year he was born.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing -King’s 2021. The descant is by David Willcocks. I’ve been singing from the carol books with his arrangements for about four decades.
Un flambeau, Jeanette Isabella – Loreena McKennitt. I’ll bring a torch for this rendition.
The inverse what?
The Shepherd’s Farewell by Hector Berlioz -Royal Choral Society. I’m a sucker for the inverse pedal point.
Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells) – Bel Canto Choir Vilnius. I like the slower version of this tune.
O Come, All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles) at Westminster Abbey. Joyful AND triumphant!
Little Drummer Boy – Johnny Cash and Neil Young. This is a fascinating pairing. I know a LOT of people who HATE this song and/or Neil’s voice, which I suppose is why I embrace it.
E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come. My choir sings this almost every Advent.
Silent Night (Oíche Chiúin) – Enya. It’s one of my absolutely favorite versions of this song. It’s stunning.
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day – fillyjonk writes about this Civil War-era piece based on a Longfellow poem.
New York Times
The Times has a column called The Amplifier by Lindsay Zoladz. A piece earlier in the month pondered: “They’re great songs. Are they Christmas songs?” Here are a few of them.
White Winter Hymnal -Fleet Foxes. “When a non-holiday song is suddenly reclassified in the cultural imagination as a holiday song, often, one must blame Pentatonix.”
So Much Wine – The Handsome Family. It was “Phoebe Bridgers’ pick last year in her annual Christmas covers series… Her version of this ballad of seasonal alcoholism is an out-and-out tear-jerker, but the Handsome Family manages to tell the same story with some dark comic relief.”
‘Tis The Damn Season -Taylor Swift. Zoladz attributes her colleague Joe Coscarelli… “with one of [her] favorite Taylor Swift conspiracy theories: That ‘Evermore,’ her second and decidedly more wintry 2020 album, was originally supposed to be a Christmas-themed release. This finely wrought ode to hometown what-ifs and temporarily rekindled romance is probably the strongest argument for that case.”
Wintering – The 1975. “Here’s another song about regressing at one’s parents’ house for a long weekend, a curiously season-specific track on the 1975’s excellent 2022 album ‘Being Funny in a Foreign Language.’ I often appreciate the details in Matty Healy’s writing, and there are some particularly vivid ones here: a precocious, vegan sister; a fleece that doesn’t warm as well as advertised; a mother with a sore back who objects to being mentioned in the song. ‘I just came for the stuffing, not to argue about nothing,’ Healy sings. ‘But mark my words, I’ll be home on the 23rd.'”
Also – Now I Know: Why Would You Name a Snowman “Parson Brown”?
David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing “Little Drummer Boy” together is my oddest duo carol.
The video on youtube is visually stunning.