Popular Christmas Songs
More recently popular Christmas songs, often introduced through film or other entertainment media, tend to be specifically about Christmas or have a wintertime theme. They are typically not overtly religious. The most popular set of these titles—which are heard over airwaves, on the internet, and on P.A. systems in shopping centres and lifts (even on the street)--have been composed and performed from the 1930s onward (although three - "Jingle Bells", "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" and "Up on the House Top" - date from the mid-19th century.)
The largest portion of these songs in some way describes or reminds of the Christmas traditions, how Americans tend to celebrate the holiday, i.e., with caroling, mistletoe, exchanging of presents, a Christmas tree, feasting, jingle bells, etc. Celebratory or sentimental and nostalgic in tone, they hearken back to simpler days with memorable holiday practices. Many titles help to define the mythical aspects of modern Christmas celebration: Santa Claus bringing presents, coming down the chimney, being pulled by reindeer, etc. New mythical characters are added—and defined-- by these songs, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (first described in a book, but popularized by the related song) and Frosty the Snowman.
The remainder of the songs are seasonal: celebrating wintertime with all its snow, dressing up for the cold, sleighing, etc.
Read more about this topic: Christmas Music
Famous quotes containing the words popular, christmas and/or songs:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I saw three ships come sailing by,
Come sailing by, come sailing by,
I saw three ships come sailing by,
On Christmas Day in the morning.”
—Unknown. As I Sat on a Sunny Bank. . .
Oxford Book of Light Verse, The. W. H. Auden, ed. (1938)
“On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me,
“Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again”—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)