[78-L] The Christmas Songs

[David Lennick]

Kristjan Saag wrote:
> 
> Mike Biel answered:
>> Sleigh Bells do not a Christmas song make. Perhaps in Sweden which is
>> one of the countries which is generally homogenic and overwhelmingly of
>> one ethnic and religious background, anything relating with winter is
>> considered to be relating to Christmas.  But I would tend to think that
>> even there, people stop singing "Silent Night", "Oh Tannenbaum", "Adeste
>> Fidelis", "Little Drummer Boy", "Good King Wenceslas", "Oh Holy Night",
>> "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", "White Christmas", and other REAL
>> Christmas songs around December 28 or so, while "Sleigh Ride", "Winter
>> Wonderland", "Let it Snow", "Jingle Bells" etc will continue thru
>> January, February, and maybe even March (depending on the weather, not a
>> holiday).
> ---
> I've yet to see record companies starting to issue "Best Of Winter" 
> compilations with Santafree songs, good until March in Massachusetts and All 
> Year Round in Alaska.
> I assure you: "Sleigh Ride" is as dead as a doornail after December 26 even 
> in the iciest parts of Northern Norway.

Horsefeathers, Kristjan..Sleigh Ride and other winter songs will be played on 
radio stations well into January. And I have seen several LPs of winter 
compilations, going back to a Jo Stafford one in the fifties, a Skitch 
Henderson one that was half classical, quite a few others. They'd usually be 
filed with the Christmas LPs but they provided a nice buffer for building up to 
Christmas and moving away from it, AND they filled the requirement of playing 
seasonal music without ramming Jesus down everyone's throat even back in the 
60s when (a) far less of the stuff was required, programmed or even available 
and (b) nobody gave a rat's ass about political correctness.  Ooh, I said a bad 
word.

dl (who gets wished Merry Christmas a lot more than you'd expect)