Why Is Christmas Music So God Awful Now? I Think I Know The Reason
There hasn't been a good Christmas movie or song in over 30 years. Why?
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The other day it was brought to my attention that radio stations and streaming services are still broadcasting the song The Christmas Shoes, which is the single best argument against the First Amendment that perhaps has ever been made.
Any civilized society would have imprisoned everybody responsible for that song and banned it many years ago.
And in case you're unfamiliar with it, the song is about a guy who's in a bad mood.
He's doing Christmas shopping.
And then a kid who's dressed in ragged clothing goes up to the checkout line with a bunch of pennies and tries to buy some Christmas shoes.
He tells the clerk that his mother is dying and he wants to buy her shoes so that she looks beautiful for Jesus.
Listen.
Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please.
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size.
Could you hurry, sir?
Daddy says there's not much time.
You see, she's been sick for quite a while.
And know these shoes will make her smile.
And I want her to look beautiful if mama meets Jesus tonight.
Now, already there are a couple of problems here beyond the very bad and melodramatic singing.
First of all, if you're buying shoes or anything, there's no reason to tell the clerk why you're making the purchase.
Like nobody does that.
The clerk's job is to process the transaction.
That's it.
Doesn't really care why you're buying it unless you're buying the ingredients for a pipe bomb or something.
There's really no explanation needed.
And secondly, the song is outdated at this point.
No kid is going to be counting pennies in the checkout line because we don't make pennies anymore and everyone's using Apple Pay anyway.
Now, admittedly, back in 2002, when this song came out, that wasn't true, but it was still considered a pretty big faux pas to make everyone wait while you, quote, counted pennies for what seemed like years.
And it's an even bigger faux pas when you come up short after all that.
And third, what kind of person, child or not, thinks that people get to keep their shoes in the afterlife?
I mean, is the kid's mom a pharaoh?
Is this ancient Egypt?
What pyramid is this woman being buried in?
So at this point, even if you put aside the absurdity of wanting to dress up your dying mother, everyone in line should be furious with this kid.
But then it gets worse.
As Patton Oswald observed, the kid eventually makes it clear that he's a total scam artist.
He turns to the guy standing next to him and demands that he pays for the shoes.
Watch.
Tell me, sir, what am I gonna do?
Somehow I've gotta buy her these Christmas shoes.
So I laid the money down.
I just had to help him out.
If this pair of shoes costs $50, which in 2002 is a decent amount of money and presumably enough to buy shoes that wouldn't get you kicked out of heaven on the spot, then we're talking about 5,000 pennies that this kid was counting.
As the narrator says, it felt like it took years.
Now, imagine watching that and then the kid hits you up for more pennies.
This is where you say politely but firmly, no.
And you certainly don't pay for the shoes and then declare that you've discovered the true meaning of Christmas, which is how the song ends.
But if you look into it, you'll find that this song was wildly successful.
In fact, it was so successful that it was somehow turned into a movie and a book series.
Yes, a movie and a book series.
Hollywood treated this Christmas shoes song like it was The Hobbit.
They apparently got Rob Lowe to play the angry guy at the store who makes the poor kid happy.
And in doing so, they provided a very important illustration of a phenomenon I want to talk about today, which is the decline of Christmas songs and movies.
And conveniently enough, the Christmas shoes illustrates the decline in both of these areas.
So here's a trailer for the Christmas shoes to give you some idea of how bad things have become starting around the turn of the century.
A special pair of shoes will lead their paths to cross.
Who would have really liked this show?
I wish they were there.
Come over next time.
You're $5.50 short.
Come back after New Year's.
We'll probably be giving them away.
Too late.
Amen.
This Christmas, two families will test their faith in themselves and discover the magic that is the Christmas shoes.
now again this is back in 2002 and christmas movies have only deteriorated from from here There hasn't been a good Christmas movie in over 30 years.
None of them appear to have any understanding of Christmas, which is a pretty big problem for a Christmas movie.
There's been an uptick in I Hate My Family or I Got a Divorce, so this Christmas is going to be weird type of films, which, you know, that's like Home Alone, which is a good Christmas movie, but they can't all be centered around that.
The stakes are usually over the top where the fate of Christmas itself is on the line.
And there's often, you know, unnecessary violence as well.
Take your pick.
Bad Santa, Red One, Elf.
It's not exactly a Christmas story.
It's a wonderful life.
Miracle on 34th Street.
At Fort It's Worth, Elf was originally supposed to be much raunchier, sort of like a Christmas-themed version of old school.
And that's what the studio wanted.
John Favreau was fortunately able to prevent the studio from making that change.
But the movie is still quite bad.
So when did this trend change and why?
For Christmas songs, it's a very measurable decline.
The vast majority of the most popular Christmas songs, which made the Billboard Holiday 100 or the most played holiday songs, were written between 1942 and 1994.
So starting around 30 years ago, the music industry suddenly became incapable of producing a worthwhile Christmas song.
And part of the explanation we can assume is similar to the reason that TV shows and movies have declined in quality.
Writers in the entertainment industry are mostly obsessed with political messaging, most of which is explicitly anti-Christian.
Doesn't exactly translate into creative writing about Christmas.
And more importantly, there are only so many Christmas songs that can really exist from a practical perspective.
It's a genre of music that's only played for one month a year.
So people don't need 50,000 different Christmas songs.
No one's going to get burned out on jingle bells.
In other words, the genre is, you know, you could argue is sort of full already.
And therefore, rather than risk a lot of money on a new song that might bomb, most entertainers are happy to sing a cover of well-established classics, or they're happy to churn out garbage like Christmas Tree Farm by Taylor Swift or It Feels Like Christmas by Fallout Boy.
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But it's also hard to escape the fact that, as I mentioned previously, we've become a culture that's obsessed with irony and sarcasm.
Are very ironically detached from everything.
Recall this scene from Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.
Of course, a classic.
Charlie asks about the meaning of Christmas, and in response, he's told the story of the birth of Christ.
Watch.
I guess you were right, Linus.
I shouldn't have picked this little tree.
Everything I do turns into a disaster.
I guess I really don't know what Christmas is all about.
Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?
Sure, Charlie Brown.
I can tell you what Christmas is all about.
Lights, please.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them.
And the glory of the Lord shone round about them.
And they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not.
For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you.
You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.
That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Now, CBS executives didn't want to air that.
They thought it would bomb.
It's also not what they had in mind.
They were looking for more generic content, which they could use as a vehicle to air Coca-Cola content, since Koch was sponsoring the show.
As one of the producers, Lee Mendelson, put it, quote, I really believed if it hadn't already been scheduled for the following week, there's no way they were going to broadcast that show.
But because of the tight timeline, it did air.
It used actual child actors for voices, didn't have a laugh track, featured a jazz soundtrack, all choices that were considered extremely unconventional and risky at the time.
In the end, of course, Charles Schultz was vindicated.
And so was one of his animators, Ed Levitt, who had insisted it would be, quote, the best special he'll ever make.
The show is going to run for 100 years.
Now, normally, when an unconventional production with a unique message proves to be successful, executives try to emulate it.
But the Charlie Brown Christmas special proved to be an aberration.
By 1987, this kind of Christmas messaging, the kind that unironically sincerely reflects the meaning of Christmas, was replaced by propaganda from spiritual humanists.
This was the message of the Muppet Family Christmas, for example.
See if you can spot the difference.
What's Christmas here?
Mom, don't you have Christmas?
No.
Well, that's when you gather together with the people you love and you wish each other peace on earth.
Oh, we have a time like that.
Yes, we do.
As a matter of fact, we're celebrating it right now.
You see, we give each other little presents.
I'm getting Ruber this nice yellow pebble.
And I gave Mookie that pebble last year.
And I gave it to Red the year before that.
And I give it to you, Wembley, the year before that.
That pebble's been a gift 37 times.
37 times?
Yeah.
So this was the beginning of the end as far as Christmas movies and shows were concerned.
It's a reflection of culture becoming homogenous, of every event or holiday being about our general happiness, you know, rather than any deeper meaning.
By the early 2000s, South Park was producing episodes about this tension over the true meaning of Christmas, which seemed to really confuse people at the time.
We meet again, Jesus.
You have blemished the meaning of Christmas for the last time, Kringle.
I bring happiness and love to children all over the world.
Christmas is for celebrating my birth.
Christmas is for giving.
I'm here to put an end to your blasphemy.
This time we finish it.
There can be only one.
Dude, this is pretty f***ed up right here.
Yoooo!
I think I learned something today.
It doesn't matter if you're Christian or Jewish or atheist or Hindu.
Christmas still is about one very important thing.
Yeah, ham.
Don't not ham, you fat.
Christmas is about something much more important.
What?
Presents.
Ah, don't you see, Kyle?
Yeah, presents.
Hey, man, if you're Jewish, you get presents for eight days.
Wow, really?
Count me in.
Yeah, I'll be a Jew too.
Day-to-day, I made you out of clay.
Now, 50 years after Charlie Brown's Christmas, this is the kind of cartoon that children were watching.
You can make the case that South Park has a more complicated plot.
You could say it's funnier and more profane and more ironic.
All that is true.
But a culture that's defined by detachment and irony that never wants to take anything seriously at a fundamental level is very different from a culture that values authenticity and vulnerability and humility.
True spirituality.
It produces different kinds of people and different kinds of relationships.
And ultimately, it produces Christmas movies like this.
It's Christmas.
We should celebrate, they said.
Just a little get-together for the employees.
Have a few drinks.
Blow off a little steam.
Nothing crazy.
Merry Christmas, Jeremy.
Great night, huh?
That makes the Christmas shoes movie look like a best picture nominee.
Christmas content has gone from authentic and memorable to trite and tacky, to openly profane and disturbing.
That's the trajectory.
And one of the things that needs to change is that we need to establish a clear definition of a Christmas movie.
It's a cliched debate at some level, but maybe we'll help to spell this out.
A Christmas movie needs to take place on Christmas, obviously.
Or at least like needs to be centered around the actual event of the actual day of Christmas, the holiday of Christmas.
And as I've said before, there needs to be snow.
There needs to be a big guy in a bushy white beard like Gandalf and the Lord of the Rings.
There needs to be some statement, either express or implied, about the true meaning of Christmas.
And it needs to make you feel merry.
Like it needs to actually have that feeling.
It can't depress you or gross you out.
It can't be about averting the end of the world or the end of Christmas or the death of Santa.
It needs to make you feel like a kid watching Charlie Brown in the 1960s.
A country that values Christmas movies like this, actual Christmas movies, will be less annoying and much happier.
It won't be mystified about the true meaning of Christmas either.
And 10 years from now, they might actually remember the new Christmas movies they're watching and the new Christmas songs they're listening to.
Good Christmas content, above all else, is memorable.
It creates traditions.
It's evergreen, you know, appropriately enough, for the winters.
You can revisit it every year.
We haven't lost the technology or the ability to return to that level of quality.