21–30 of 49 posts
I am not a Christian, never was, but I can't listen to Silent Night without tears coming to my eyes. May there be peace on earth for all beings.
Have you ever watched the film Joyeux Noel?
There's a fun movie from the 80's that I remember enjoying as a kid called Silent Mouse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Mouse
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Night,_Deadly_Night_P...
It expertly straddles the line between “so bad it’s good” and “so bad it’s bad”
> Is it the greatest Christmas song ever? I’m a church organist inter alia and I doubt any of my fellows would say it was. O Come All Ye Faithful? Certainly. Hark the Herald? Could be. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with that spine-tingling David Willcocks last verse? Perhaps. But sweet, saccharine Silent Night? It wouldn’t be on the list.
Give me O Come All Ye Faithful or One in Royal David's City from Carols for Choirs. Or O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
> Is it the greatest Christmas song ever? I’m a church organist inter alia and I doubt any of my fellows would say it was. O Come All Ye Faithful? Certainly. Hark the Herald? Could be. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with that spine-tingling David Willcocks last verse? Perhaps. But sweet, saccharine Silent Night? It wouldn’t be on the list.
Oh Holy Night, when done very well. But it suffers more than most when the performance is just mediocre.
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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and Carol of the Bells are my favorites.
Nice choices! IMO the best Christmas songs have a mix of joy and something.. else. Something a little eerie. Not quite foreboding , exactly, but definitely a bit tense. From a certain perspective, maybe this is theologically correct to have a mix of "Yay Jesus is coming!" and also at the same time "Oh shit, he's coming here?!? " For those from other faith traditions, imagine you hear that your CEO is finally going to…
>Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique note is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama. [...] There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won. All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only bangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapor from the exultant, explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savor is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaws den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicing in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might in that sense have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.
[0] http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting...
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Rural England? I wish...
My theory is that most people who don’t like Silent Night never got to have a truly silent winter night... which of course requires active snowfall with no wind.
Not when it's 40ºC.
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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and Carol of the Bells are my favorites.
Don't forget about Joy To The World. And it'll be 300 years young next year according to wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_to_the_World
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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and Carol of the Bells are my favorites.
Nice choices! IMO the best Christmas songs have a mix of joy and something.. else. Something a little eerie. Not quite foreboding , exactly, but definitely a bit tense. From a certain perspective, maybe this is theologically correct to have a mix of "Yay Jesus is coming!" and also at the same time "Oh shit, he's coming here?!? " For those from other faith traditions, imagine you hear that your CEO is finally going to…