According to the latest data and certifications of the Recording Industry of America, Elvis’ Christmas Album, recorded by Elvis Presley (who else?) has shipped at least 13 million copies since its original release in 1957. That makes it the biggest-selling Christmas album of all time. The album has been re-issued and repackaged several times, and continues to be a perennial holiday best-seller. It sold three million copies upon its original release in 1957 and has sold an additional ten million copies in the various forms it has been reissued in.
Titi Nguyen surveys the history of Christmas songs:
The songs that most of us recognize as carols date back thousands of years. They were originally pagan songs sung during celebrations of fruitful harvests and seasonal solstices in Europe. During the early seventeenth century, after Christians adapted these songs to celebrate the birth of Christ, carolers began singing door-to-door, in public spaces, and at home. Peasants roamed about singing for their suppers at the doors of the wealthy, and the celebration of the birth of Christ was an especially generous time when lords invited poor villagers to their manors to feast and drink. Groups of young men called wassailers would sing good tidings in exchange for food or money. Neighbors learned the same songs and sang them in unison with and for each other; caroling was a community event.
Meanwhile, Robert Bound considers contemporary offerings:
So what makes a good Christmas song? Well, not being too good is key. There’s a kitschness to Christmas that’s not the opposite of quality but a sister to silliness (see Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody”). Smells and bells in both musical and metaphorical form are also important at Christmas. This is when you can add the extras that would seem extraneous in other seasons. “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, belted out by Mariah Carey with the full compliment of trills and vocal tricks seems just about suitable when there are sleigh bells and choirs in (and on) the mix. Like wearing a reindeer-busy Christmas jumper for sitting around the house, this is a time when there’s almost no such thing as too much.
An extensive collection of Christmas songs from around the world is here.
A new survey suggests that American shoppers are warming to more secular holiday greetings:
Nearly half (49%) of Americans agree stores and businesses should greet their customers with “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” instead of “merry Christmas” out of respect for people of different faiths. However, a substantial minority (43%) disagree. Support for saying “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” is up slightly since December 2010, when 44% preferred that businesses use less religious greetings. … The political divisions are stark. Roughly 6-in-10 (61%) Republicans favor using “merry Christmas” over “happy holidays,” while nearly as many (58%) Democrats say the opposite.
Matthew Schmitz reviews historical objections to “Merry Christmas”:
Queen Elizabeth, a woman of serious low-church piety, is said to prefer “happy” to “merry” because she dislikes “merry’s” connotation of boisterousness, even slight intoxication. (Similarly, in Holland some of the more strictly reformed Dutch prefer Zalig Kerstfeest—“Blessed Christmas”—to Vrolijk Kerstmis—“Merry Christmas.”) This moral suspicion of “Merry Christmas” dates back to the Methodist churchmen of the Victorian era who sought to promote sobriety among the English working class. Merrymaking of the ancient, alcoholic sort was frowned on year-round, perhaps never more so than during the celebration of the Savior’s birth. The phrase “Merry Christmas” would hang on, but the image of a family sharing a bottle of port or wine in the first commercial Christmas card was to give way to more temperate holiday depictions.
Yesterday we covered Schmitz’s defense of using “Merry Xmas!”
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver Bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Please consider supporting the work of the Poetry Society of America here.
Daniel Luzer looks at how Hanukkah and Christmas in the US became co-opted by commercialization:
Ashton’s Hanukkah in America: A History explains that by the 19th century “the rising consumer economy and expansion of department stores embraced and promoted the new Christmas customs.” Prior to that time, Christmas celebrations, “where they occurred at all, tended toward ‘carnivalesque’ revelries often involving alcohol consumption and the firing of muskets in the streets, a general rowdiness usually decried by civic and religious elites,” Ashton writes. As the way we celebrate Christmas shifted over time, so too did our celebrations of Hanukkah. In short, they both became more commercial. … Many department store owners realized, correctly, that a gift-based Hanukkah could be very good for business. Only two percent of Americans are Jewish, but many of them settled in cities, where large department stores are easy to find. This meant that they could be a great addition to the market during the Christmas shopping season, so much so that for many gentiles this industry was really their only knowledge of Judaism, at least until relatively recently.
Glad to be able to provide a gift subscription for my 23-year-old daughter. I am another of those people whose is always bringing the phrase “Andrew says this” to every political, spiritual or current events discussion at our house. I didn’t realize that I was being heard until about a month ago. I usually check The Dish every day, while eating lunch or – embarrassed to admit but seems fair given previous discussion on the site – while “dropping the kids at the pool.” I don’t miss an entry. I had a very busy day at work a few weeks back and would have missed your posting of my view from my window had my daughter not recognized her own backyard. I didn’t realize she had become a daily reader – although free rider. I owe her – and you all, given how much I have gotten from the site – a gift subscription for her.
In case you missed the details: Tinypass, our e-commerce partner, just released an updated version of our gifting service, in time for Christmas. Now you can schedule the delivery of a gift subscription to the day. Just buy it now and have it automatically emailed to your friend or family member on Christmas Day. You can also add a personalized message. Just go here to fill out a quick form for a one-year gift subscription – which, remember, is a one-time purchase that won’t recur next year. The price is just $19.99 – or more if you want to give a little extra to the Dish this year. Another gift-giver writes:
I’m a long-time reader and was an early and enthusiastic subscriber, but it wasn’t until I read and listened to the latest Deep Dish that I finally got off my butt to send several gift subscriptions to friends who I know will just LOVE the essay on Pope Francis and the wide-ranging conversation with Dan Savage. It was really self-interest on my part – this volume of Deep Dish is provoking so many thoughts and ideas that I need smart people to talk to about it all! What better way, I figured, than to give gift subscriptions to some of my smart, thoughtful friends? I hope other Dish heads are feeling so inspired – it’s such an easy gift (takes no time at all!), for a friend and for the Dish.
Another:
I just sent gift subscriptions to my cousin and aunt in North Yorkshire, the few relatives of mine who love politics as much as I do. I am Canadian and don’t get to talk to or visit my British relatives all that much, so I am hoping your blog will bring us a little closer.
Another:
I’ve just purchased two gift subscriptions. One for my father, one for my brother. These two people are the ones who were most responsible for my own intellectual and worldview development as I was growing up, and I couldn’t be happier to share back with them my favorite daily source of intellectual exercise – the Dish.
And finally, if you’re one of our 35,000 Dishhead free-riders who maxed out the meter but haven’t subscribed yet, why not give yourselves and us a present? [tinypass_offer text=”Subscribe here”] for as little as $1.99 a month. From a recovering free-rider:
Sigh. I finally gave in, and subscribed today, after resisting right from the beginning of the year – not out of procrastination, but for philosophical reasons.
I realised that I’ve been reading The Dish since 2004, that it was one of the blogs that kept me sane during the Bush years, that it helped me adjust to American life significantly (like Andrew, I am a British person born in the early sixties, Oxbridge educated, came to maturity during the Thatcher years, met and fell in love with an American, and moved here ten years ago). Since that time, I’ve read The Dish several times a day, and it’s been one of the bookmarks on my web browser/mobile phone browser that always gets transferred straight away from device to device. And yet I felt unwilling to fork over the modest sum of just under twenty dollars a year when asked to fund the new venture.
Why? Because, wonderful as it is, The Dish’s marvelous commentary is still largely based on stories that originate elsewhere. It’s like the best opinion page on the planet, but if I wasn’t paying for the news sources that dig up those stories in the first place, it didn’t seem right to spend the money on a blog either. Well, one solution is to pay for both, which I have done (New York Times is getting a subscription, too).
The main reason that made me change my mind is, quite simply, Deep Dish. Longer pieces that are related to the blog but more closely resemble magazine journalism, e-books like the Iraq War penance – that is absolutely worth paying for.
Finally, you’ve heard this many times before, but it’s the fact that I don’t always agree with you that keeps me coming back. You’ve created a unique space on the Internet, and I am now happy to contribute a little cash to keep it going.
The first Supreme Court case regarding Christmas displays was in 1984, with another in 1989. In short, the Court ruled that government Christmas displays are unconstitutional if they endorse or convey a religious message. This produced the “Reindeer Rule”, which called for equal representation for non-religious Christmas symbols. Consequently, to avoid legal battles, many local governments erect secular decorations along with their crèche; others simply open up a public space for anyone to display their holiday decoration of choice. While others just pay lip service to the rule, erecting only small Mr. and Mrs. Santa Clauses far behind the crèche, still, others ignore the rule entirely. This year, a few southern states have even passed or proposed “Merry Christmas Laws” that directly contradict the Court’s rulings. The battle continues.
To be fair, of course, not all Christians are unfamiliar with the factual history of Christmas and America’s founding, but not all Christians like courthouse nativities. They recognize the need for church/state separation, and object to such displays for the same reason as seculars and non-Christians. Nativities are for display at a church, and at a Christian’s home—not the Courthouse.
(Photo of nativity scene made of ice by Sam Howzit)
Francesca Gino explains how underdressing can actually increase perceived social status:
In recent research, my Harvard Business School colleagues Silvia Bellezza and Anat Keinan and I found that under certain conditions, nonconforming behaviors, such as not following the expected dress code or the appropriate professional conduct in a given context, can signal higher status. In our research, for example, shop assistants working in boutiques selling luxury brands in Milan assigned greater status to the woman wearing gym clothes and a jean jacket rather than to the woman properly dressed. In another study, students assigned higher status to a 45-year-old professor working at a top-tier university when he was described as wearing a t-shirt and had a beard than to a clean-shaven one wearing a tie. When the deviant behavior appears to be deliberate, it can lead to higher status inferences rather than lower ones.
Why is this the case? Nonconformity often has a social cost, so people assume people breaking the rules enjoy a powerful enough position that they are not concerned about the costs.
Love Actually is a considerable outlier among romantic comedies in its rigorous conviction not only that people fall in love without really knowing one another, but that they don’t even need to learn anything about each other to confirm their initial attraction. … The fundamental problem with Love Actually is that it presents romance as either absurdly easy—something that strikes you like a thunderclap and requires only a single grand gesture in order to be fulfilled—or all but impossible. Notably absent is the idea that love might ever be worth a little sustained effort: some mutual exploration and discovery, a bit of care and nurture, maybe even the overcoming of an obstacle or two. Indeed, it’s hard to shake the sense that what is “classic” about Love Actually is not that it shows us anything about how people fall in love, but that it so conspicuously declines even to try.
Emma Green issues a defense, saying she’s drawn to “the excitement and power of demonstrations of love”:
None of the movie’s characters manages to pull off a Hollywood-perfect version of this.
Hugh Grant, who plays Britain’s prime minister, gets caught kissing one of his staffers, played by Natalie McCutcheon, on stage at her nephew’s Christmas play. Colin Firth proposes to his former house cleaner, Lúcia Moniz, in grammatically sketchy Portuguese. Martin Freeman’s character meets Joanna Page’s character while they’re working as body doubles on the set of a soft-core porn movie, yet he fumbles their first kiss after he finally asks her out on a date. These scenarios are messy, awkward, and often hilarious, but they are also winning, because they make the universe seem ever-so-slightly more wondrous.
If the real world is not like this, then perhaps it’s the real world that needs to change—we’d be better off if there were more grand gestures. These are moments that remind of how special life really is: The gesturer gets the thrill of delighting someone they care about; the recipient feels as though they are uniquely worth of someone’s affections; and bystanders believe that, one day, they too might find the high heights of enthusiastic, whirlwind love.
Love Actuallyis the most pro-romantic film ever. It is a clarion call to share your pent up feelings for other people. That is good. That is decent. That is rare. People like to be told that they’re thought of as wonderful, that they matter to someone else. People should do it more often. And sure, they probably don’t feel the same way about you, but you should find out. Just in cases.
Alyssa Rosenberg, for her part, appreciates the movie “not because I think it’s a compelling celebration of love, or because it’s a good holiday movie, but because of how sad the film often is.” Lindy West joins the haters, and so does Julian Sanchez, who zooms out:
The ultimate wish-fulfillment is not imagining that you can become special through sustained effort, but to have it confirmed that you were special all along, as you always secretly suspected. A romcom in which two characters find love because they are both interesting, clever, funny, accomplished, kind, confident, attractive—insert your favorite adjective here—and play equal parts in winning of the affection of the other would not only fail to scratch this itch, it would be depressing. We don’t go to movies to watch people more interesting, clever, funny etc etc than ourselves achieve love and happiness in a context very much like that of our real lives—that’s what we are watching in our real lives. We go to movies to be reassured that we can have those things without being transformed ourselves. The viewer-identification characters here, then, need to seem basically good and genial—we’re not going to project ourselves onto someone actively unlikable—but also bland and passive enough that they don’t leave us feeling like true love is for people with desirable characteristics we conspicuously lack.
Orr stands by his claim that the film is “not merely unromantic, but actively anti-romantic”:
The problem … is the patterns that emerge when you consider the film as a whole. One subplot about an older man wooing a much-younger subordinate? Fine. But three? And on it goes: not one, but two gags (three, if you count the Colin subplot) about how the only possible way a man could overcome heartbreak is with the assistance of one or more supermodels; two storylines in which women (never men) see their romantic lives shattered by obstacles that ought to be surmountable; and, most important, upwards of half a dozen subplots in which characters go directly from initial physical infatuation to (presumed) happily-ever-afters, without remotely bothering to get to know one another in between. … Set aside the [Laura] Linney and [Alan] Rickman-[Emma] Thompson storylines (which I find problematic in other ways), and it’s almost two hours of rom-com porn, of grand gestures with little buildup and no follow through, of money shots.
Catherine Andrews calls for a truce, claiming that “almost all ‘rom coms’ are this bad”:
Look, in the end, I can forgive anybody, including myself, who likes Love Actually. Because BRITISH ACCENTS. And Colin Firth. And I guess it kinda WOULD be nice to fall in love without having to ever try or talk to a person or go on OKCupid. … And we could also just admit to ourselves, Love Actually is a movie with many sins, but sometimes, things are hard, and we just want to pop a beer and watch a stupid fantasy movie. Arrow-shooting elves don’t exist, but they’re fun to watch — and just because they’re depicted on screen doesn’t necessarily mean that most of us think it’s that way in real life. At least, I hope not.
Walking with the Wounded team member Duncan Slater is embraced by his daughter Lilly on his return to London Heathrow on December 23, 2013. The South Pole allied expedition comprised of three international teams made up of wounded servicemen and women from the UK, the US and the Commonwealth (Australia and Canada) trekking across 335km of the Antarctic Plateau to reach the South Pole in 16 days. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Why? Because, wonderful as it is, The Dish’s marvelous commentary is still largely based on stories that originate elsewhere. It’s like the best opinion page on the planet, but if I wasn’t paying for the news sources that dig up those stories in the first place, it didn’t seem right to spend the money on a blog either. Well, one solution is to pay for both, which I have done (New York Times is getting a subscription, too).
