"It makes me wonder – why AREN’T new holiday carols being written and recorded each year as with other songs? I’d wager good money that “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” was the last original Christmas song ever written or recorded, and that song is probably fifty years old by now or close to it."It's a good question, one with no easy answer, yet if one does ponder it, the answer does hold an explanation to our fractured secular society, and changing cultural landscape.
I read some good comments under that post which touched on ‘why are there no new Christmas songs?’ Yet most merely describe the symptoms and not the cause. I think the answer is very simple: Nobody wants them. There are cultural reasons and commercial reasons, to be sure, but why are these the reasons?
I think it’s because the public reality about the traditional things from our once shared Western heritage are no longer important to the culture at large. The celebration of Christmas was often a reflection of a shared cultural heritage that drew the particulars and participation of that celebration from the many Christian immigrants who came to the shores of the U.S.; IE: The Catholic church gave us the very word Christmas, from their ‘Christ Mass’; The Protestant Germans gave us the Christmas tree; The Scandinavians gave us the Yule log; The Anglican English gave us caroling and Christmas cards; Currier & Ives immortalized it all in print. The American descendants, distilled from all of them, gave us the shopping mall.
Christmas is a religious holy day at its core, and in the United States, the faithful are still free to observe and worship as they please. Over the centuries, the joy and beauty of the celebration did overlap into the secular arena, and was enjoyed by the culture at large, but in a pluralistic society, such as the United States, there is a malignant & virulent anti-theistic ideology pervasive within our instant gratification society that eschews Faith, is enamored of sophistry, idolizes hedonism, and claims to be intolerant of intolerance.
The tap root of this noxious anti-theistic weed is firmly entrenched in universities, spreading its seeds via credit hours, manifesting itself in the hive mind of disciples, utilizing ridicule and derision for protection, with woody tentacles stretching well into elementary schools; eventually choking out the tender fruit of the Spirit, and relegating the Christ child to the nether region of relativistic myth, separated by state edict. The ACLU, et al, makes a small fortune insuring this repression.
In the new millennium, nanny-state is god; political correctness is theology; and turpitude is worship. There are anthems to debauchery and hagiography to political rock stars because there's money to be made and agendas to advance, but there are no new Christmas songs because nobody wants them.
Merry Christmas to all.
