When it comes to holiday music, we like what we like.
Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe we like a song because it’s a tune we played in high school band or sang every year in the holiday pageant. Maybe it’s just a catchy ditty that, once it’s in our ear, it lingers for decades.
Who doesn’t know the words to “Jingle Bells” or even the words to “Sleigh Ride” sung by the Ronettes and played year after year by the Boston Pops at holiday time?
Peter McCarthy, of Cambridge, shopping at the vintage market in Somerville’s Armory Sunday, said his favorite holiday song is “Sleigh Ride.”
“I played in the band in high school and we played it every year for the Christmas concert,” McCarthy said. “I love the syncopations and the rhythms. And especially the sound of the heavy whip crack. It brings me back.”
Breaking down the pieces
Forensic musicologist Prof. Joe Bennett at Berklee College of Music in Boston maintains Christmas music is different from popular music, not just because of the themes encompassed by the lyrics, but because holiday music is inherently different. Holiday songs have longer chord sequencing, with eight to 16 bars, not just two bar loops. And most of the songs he analyzed in 2016 for a songwriting projectare composed in a major key.
Bennett picked Christmas week 2016 to analyze the top 200 songs. He separated out the general pop music ditties and was left with 78 titles. Of those, 95 percent were written in a major key, and 38 featured sleigh bells.
“I don’t know anyone who has heard sleigh bells outside of a holiday song,” Bennett said.
Bennett found eight general themes in holiday songs: home-coming and family, love at Christmas time, loss of love at Christmas time and loneliness, partying, Santa and related imagery. The themes continue with weather and snow, and general coming together and peace on earth.
Significantly, Americans are listening to more secular songs around holiday time, with just a few religious songs still in rotation, including “The Little Drummer Boy,” and “A Child is Born.”
Two perennial favorites were written about 50 years apart: Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” an inherently nostalgic song that looks back on itself. The second perennial favorite is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.”
The first, Bennett called a masterpiece of song-craft.
“It has two verses and 32 bars,” Bennett noted, adding it’s over in a flash. The second has the 1960s Phil Spector-style tambourines, timpani and tubular bells. Yet it shares chords with “White Christmas.”
“I speculate; was it deliberate in the part of the songwriter,” Bennett asks. “The songs share four minor chords that contribute to evoking a warm, snuggly, Christmassy feel.”
Two favorites with local ties
Two songs with Massachusetts roots, “Sleigh Ride” and its similar sister“Jingle Bells,” embody Bennett’s finding that many holiday songs use sleigh bells to evoke Christmas. Medford claims one, “Jingle Bells,” and Cambridge the other.
The more modern song “Sleigh Ride” was written in 1948 by Cambridge native and Harvard graduate student Leroy Anderson. He was the director of the Harvard University Band and came to the attention of Boston Pops director Arthur Fiedler. Anderson wrote several works for the band director before working on "Sleigh Ride."
Anderson completed that song in February to have it performed by the Pops in May of that year and by the holiday season it was being played in New York City department stores. Lyrics were an afterthought, written for the piece by Michael Parish in 1950. The Pops continue to play the song, and people can hear The Ronettes, and Johnny Mathis, among others, sing it.
Scott Istvan, a Somerville resident, likes his holiday music to be upbeat and energetic. He likes the work of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the “Christmas Eve and Other Stories.” A close second; Mariah Carey and “All I want for Christmas is You.”
Ahmed Hassan recalls Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” because he sang it every year when he was young.
Joanna Plotz, who finds the proliferation of holiday music disturbing, noted that most of the great Christmas songs were written by Jews, mentioning Irving Berlin specifically.
Ryan Fleischer likes a John Lennon song: “Happy Xmas, (War is Over),” while Rebecca Tauber likes “Candlelight” by the Maccabeats.
Religiousorigins
Some holiday songs with Massachusetts roots also have roots in the ministry.
Edmund Sears, author of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” was born and raised in Massachusetts and worked as a preacher in various congregations. His 1849 poem, since set to music, conveyed the universal message of peace. The composer was Richard Storrs Willis, also a Boston native.
In the religious genre is “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, a Boston native. He wrote the song while serving as the rector of the Church of Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. His organist, Lewis Redner, composed the original music for the poem.
'Jingle Bells' controversy
In contrast to these was the famous “Jingle Bells,” first published in 1857 as “One Horse Open Sleigh.”
The song was written by James Lord Pierpont, the rebellious son of Unitarian minister and abolitionist preacher Rev. John Pierpont, of Boston. The younger Pierpont was heard to play “One Horse Open Sleigh” as far back as 1850 at Simpson’s Tavern in Medford Square.
James Lord Pierpont, who worked briefly as a church organist in his brother’s congregation, later became a staunch supporter of the South and Confederacy, was a rebel at heart.
Pierpont ran away from boarding school at age 14 to crew aboard a whaling ship, returned home to marry, father children, and then chase riches during the 1849 California Gold Rush. He returned home briefly only to leave again to play the organ in his brother’s church in Savannah.
Some argue Pierpont wrote the song while living in Medford and a city plaque proclaims that origin; others say it came later, while he was living in Savannah where a similar plaque makes the same claim.Regardless of where he penned the music and the lyrics, its Massachusetts roots are undeniable.
“It’s a catchy song,” said Kyna Hamill of “Jingle Bells.”
Medford resident, master lecturer at Boston University and director of core curriculum, Hamill has studied and written about the origins of the song tracing its roots to the 1850s.
“The sleigh songs date to 1853 to the 1860s,” Hamill said.
The song genre depicts a courting ritual, referencing drag racing on sleighs and picking up girls. The Boston doctor for whom the song was penned was the organizer of a troupe of white men performing in blackface called Ordway’s Aeolians, according to Hamill. An 1857 playbill mentions the performance of “One Horse Open Sleigh,” the original title of the song, by Johnny Pell, a member of the “Dandy Darkies.”
Troubling origins, but fun to sing
The concept of what constituted entertainment in the 1800s was extremely alienating, Hamill said, referencing the popularity of minstrel shows in which men dressed in blackface and in drag to perform.
“It wasn’t a respectful nod, but a burlesquing," she said, "a grotesque art form.”
In the 1800s, songs came into popular culture through staging of shows and the publishing of sheet music and music anthologies. Families attending minstrel shows could stop on their way home to purchase the sheet music from Oliver Ditson & Co.to sing in their own homes.
Bringing the music home took it outside of the context of minstrel music, Hamill said. She acknowledges the origins of the song are troubling.
“People shouldn’t stop singing 'Jingle Bells' because of its origin, it’s part of the bigger story of American popular music,” Hamill said. “It’s also popular and fun to sing.”
Paul Barringer, of Cambridge, an accomplished musician and retired classroom music teacher who worked for years at Albert F. Argenziano School in Somerville, taught “Jingle Bells” to children in the lower grades.
For years, kindergarten classes at Argenziano closed the holiday concert at the school with a lively rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Barringer’s collection of hand bells, strapped around wrists and ankles, jingled as the children bellowed the chorus and shook their hands and stamped their feet to make music.
“It’s very singable,” Barringer said. As a general music teacher, he used the song as a vehicle to teach verse and chorus; the short chorus contrasts with the longer verse, giving youngsters a base for comparison between the two. “The chorus is short, concise and jubilant, instantly likeable and memorable.”
Barringer also loves the connection to the bells: with an array of jingle bells, triangles and finger cymbals, the song instantly evokes snow. And the song easily lends itself to movement; children can move to show gliding and sliding and a way to express the rush of riding in a one-horse open sleigh in the cold.
“It’s a classic,” Barringer said, adding that it has evolved from its roots to become a family song. “At one time, I would say that more than half the adult population of the country knew the song.”
Waxing nostalgic
At Stereo Jack’s, a vintage record store on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Jack Woker, said he sets aside all the Christmas themed albums he finds when he buys record collections and sets them out around Thanksgiving.
“They’re pretty wall picked-over by now,” Woker said. “All the best ones are gone.”
The most popular: The Johnny Mathis Christmas album; Ella Fitzgerald and Phil Spector also sell well.
At Somerville Grooves in Union Square, another vintage vinyl store, David Plunkett says the Muppets Christmas Album featuring John Denver sells well, as does Stevie Wonder’s Christmas album. "Jingle Bells" is a perennial favorite, no matter who sings it, as well as "White Christmas,""Winter Wonderland" and even “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
“It’s a question of nostalgia, of bringing back childhood,” Plunkett said.
Down the street at High Energy Vintage, Andrew Wiley said the Bing Crosby and Andy Williams Christmas albums sell well. His favorite? “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses. Jessamy Kilcollins snagged her favorite: The Muppets with John Denver as soon as it appeared in the store.
Donna Sochanominates Wham's “Last Christmas.”
"It’s nostalgic, bittersweet and I love their voices,” Socha said. “And Christmas is all about nostalgia.”
