Hey, shouldn’t you wait a few months and do this one in December?
No. I’m doing it now. So shut up.
Jingle All The Way - Crash Test Dummies
This is another album I have NPR to thank for. I forgot the exact context, but one December during a Christmas-themed show a song came on that I immediately knew I had to acquire somehow. I listened for the name of the band, did some googling, and soon had the Crash Test Dummies’ Jingle All The Way in my CD player. To this day it remains my favorite Christmas album - even though my own father made a Christmas album that I am genetically obligated to like more, and even though Christmas music (or at least Christmas pop music) is a source of rage for at least one sixth of each year.
What makes this different from most Christmas pop music is its deliberate divergence from and simultaneous honoring of tradition and convention. Little-known carols are given the attention they have long been denied and thus seem new, while the played-out, cliche-ridden ones are given an extra spark or stylistic twist that almost amounts to affectionate parody.
The latter is especially apparent in the two most commonly-played songs. The version of White Christmas on this album is the only version I will tolerate, and in fact enjoy, and it is only because of Brad Roberts’ droll, almost sarcastic delivery of the vocals. And Jingle Bells is nearly unrecognizable as the bland and cheery ditty we all know and are pretty tired of by now (it is this song that was played on the radio and persuaded me to buy the album). Both songs really must be heard to be believed.
Other songs are religious rather than secular, and are played straight or with a more subtle breakage from cliche. Good King Wenceslas, which is somewhat known but rarely sung in my experience, has an imaginatively theatrical aspect befitting the story it tells. And two other songs, which I had never heard before and I doubt many of us have, are treated the most beautifully: In the Bleak Midwinter and The Huron Carol. The latter deserves some extra explanation.
The Huron Carol was written by a Jesuit missionary wanting to tell the story of Jesus’s birth in words that the Huron Indians would understand. So he described Jesus as being born in a bark lodge, visited by hunters and foreign chiefs bringing gifts of fur. Think what you will of the resulting song - I know some might consider it cultural misappropriation, or a relic of European imperialism - but I think it is the single most beautiful song on this album, and its history makes it all the more interesting. I see it as an acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of our world, and perhaps an attempt to reconcile it with the globalization and homogenization we may have to expect in modern times. Either way, it’s worth listening to.
Next: God Shuffled His Feet
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