Music for the Season

Think about this: Would you invite the Grinch to plan your Christmas Holiday season? Would you call up Scrooge to ask him for advice about decorating for Christmas? Well, that’s about what it feels like. I was asked to reflect on “the music of the season.” Problem is, I’m a liturgist. (Dun, da, dun, dun!) I’m sure you’ve heard that joke.

All that being said, here goes.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find what we call the “Holiday season” rather perplexing.
Wherever I look, I see ads for Christmas shopping. Wherever I go “Christmas music” (AKA “Holiday music!”) plays merrily. It’s omnipresent: at the mall, on the radio, in the grocery store, at the retail stores. At the same time, however, the Church celebration of the end of the liturgical year (late October and November) and Advent (November and December) vies for attention.

Now, I like all the old favorites – White Christmas, Silent Night, Jingle Bells, Grandma got run over... Oops. I especially treasure the magisterial Messiah by G. F. Handel (“For unto us a child is born...”). I’m a sucker for Babs and Sinatra, for Bing and Elvis, even the Chipmunks at this time of year. Who isn’t? Well, perhaps Mr. Grinch isn’t. That’s where the liturgist in me wants to step back (without stepping on too many toes) to take note of the dissonance.

One way to distinguish liturgical music from other types is to consider form and function. Basically, liturgical music is meant to serve the congregation at Mass (or other liturgies) as they actively participate in the Church’s worship of God in faith. Other types of music address their “public” in terms of functions appropriate to the genre. Rock ‘n roll, hip hop, big band, and rhythm and blues each helps its respective audiences dance. Classical music appeals both to intelligence as well as to the heart. Whereas in the past, chant served in the liturgy, today it is used to soothe and calm individuals who lead hectic lives.

Another, yet similar, way to make the distinction looks at the relationship the music is intended to establish. Dance music of all types relates dancers eye to eye and hip to hip. It’s part fun, part mating ritual, part joyful expression, but it’s
about the relationship between a couple. Classical music can move an audience, but aesthetic appreciation tends to be, in the main, an individual’s unique experience. Christmas music, to a large degree, puts an individual (or even a family) in touch with a remembered and valued past. The feeling of nostalgia tends to involve a warm, personal, emotional response to a feeling one wants to encounter again and retain. In some ways, Christian popular music today functions more like Christmas music.

Now, while Liturgical music can be used to establish all these relationships, I believe its primary and intended purpose is that of relating a praying congregation (made up of individuals) with the Risen Christ in the Spirit in praise of and thanks to the Father. It maintains at one and the same time a horizontal (among members of the Body of Christ) and vertical (toward the Triune God) dimension. Not all other music seems to me to intend the same orientation.

Advent seems so counter-intuitive. At the very time when the days are getting shorter in the northern hemisphere, when people have to deal with SAD, and when we all put out those delightfully endearing tiny white lights everywhere... this is the very time that the Church year asks us to embrace the mystery of the night that we avoid.

Moreover, when many of us are all about creating the comfy, cozy, perfectly arranged Minnesota-type craft Christmas scene in our homes, this is the same time the scriptures of Advent/ Christmas speak of no room in the inn, a baby born in a manger, and poor shepherds advancing toward Bethlehem.  How odd.

As the child in each of us longs for presents, and as the lover in each of us desires to be beloved on our terms, the scriptures have us call out for the end of the Age, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

While so many people experience alienation from home, country, and religion, the Word in Advent promises a return from exile as it prophesies a world made new.

When many of us are counting calories during the 40 days between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, in a world full of famine, the scriptures call us to embrace our hungers.

Finally, in the midst of so much warring today, angels sing of peace and reconciliation among nations.

Does White Christmas support these movements of Advent? Well, some fine Advent music does exist out there: Gentle Night by the St. Louis Jesuits, Prince of Peace by Dan Schutte, as well as the first half of Messiah are great examples. (More examples of Advent/Christmas music are on p. 21.)

OK, let’s all go about our way, listening to Bing and Babs, watching Miracle on 34th Street. Those are wonderful things to do. Perhaps the lure of Advent might create some harmonies as well as some surprising counterpoints or even interesting dissonances with it all and lead us to desire to celebrate Christ’s advent.  

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