Eclectic Company: Christmas We Have Heard On High

For most of my life, I’ve concealed a guilty pleasure: I love Christmas music. Solemn, silly, or sentimental, traditional, modern or post-modern, whether it calls to me from a TV or movie screen with surround sound, spits tinny and underamplified from the Salvation Army bell-ringer’s boombox, or billows out of my old car’s rattling and crackling fade-in-and-out speakers, I just love it all. I hear those first notes of anyone’s recording of “White Christmas” playing on some Lite-FM radio station, or find myself shopping in Books-A-Million to the strains of “Santa Baby” or “Jingle Bell Rock,” and I start to bop and hum, or even sing out loud, as a great contentment steals over me.

Which I’d be the first to admit is really quite odd, because I’m Jewish, from an Orthodox family, and unlike some Jews from non-Orthodox traditions, I grew up without Christmas. I don’t mean I didn’t know about it, that I missed all the signs of the approaching season from street banners to department store sales, that I never saw “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “Miracle On 34th Street.” No, what I mean is that my family didn’t and doesn’t celebrate Christmas. To this day we have no tree strung with lights and a carefully preserved collection of ornaments, we hang no wreaths or mistletoe, our real estate is never decorated with blow-up vinyl yard Santas or Styrofoam rooftop reindeer sleighs, and never in my life have we gone caroling, or stayed awake sipping hot cocoa so we could participate in a midnight Mass.

That’s because I grew up without Jesus, as Jewish people do not follow him, and we are still waiting for the time of the coming of the Messiah. Friends who are good Christians have often suggested that I should celebrate Christmas anyway — make my own rituals, and share in the holiday’s secular traditions without feeling guilty about ignoring its fundamental meaning — often arguing that as there’s been a substantial decline in the religious focus of the season for Christians (as amply evidenced by the commercialization of the holiday, which seems to be what they’re inviting me to enjoy), the holiday I would be celebrating would be about family and community, about gifts and food. But despite their good intentions, I find that I can only participate in the season secondhand, through the eyes and experiences of my Christian friends, welcomed, to be sure, as an honored guest, but always aware that I am an outsider. Because once, while living in Israel nearly 40 years ago, I went to Bethlehem as a Christmas eve sightseer, and there, at the site of the shrine of the manger, in the company of many Christian pilgrims, I discovered that a modern day Christmas, for all its pagan and popular shopping and giving rituals, is, first and foremost, the time for his followers to celebrate Jesus’s birth. Standing in the silent, reverent crowd, I could appreciate their practices as a respectful fellow visitor, but as a nonbeliever, I could not tap in to the feelings of wonder, love and joy that must have satisfied fundamental longings of those around me who clearly did believe.

So how could someone Jewish, not in communion with the Christian world, nevertheless feel so warmed by Christmas music? I’ve been thinking about this aloud today in the company of award-winning lyricist Pamela Phillips Oland (who penned, among hundreds of other songs, the Grammy-nominated and Country Music Award-winning "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do," debuted by Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson on the soap “As The World Turns,” and honored for the Anne Murray and Dave Loggins version), a nice Jewish girl who’s written several wonderful Christmas songs (including “New York Christmas” sung by Nashville-based singer/writer Benita Hill, herself an author of two of Garth Brooks’ number 1 hits).

To begin with, Oland and I noted the endurance of Jewish composer Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Berlin’s “White Christmas” is still the best-selling single of all time, although it was written and first recorded nearly 70 years ago. It’s the subject of a Broadway musical, countless articles, and scholarly and popular books. That song defined for us a simpler time, evoking what New York Times journalist Stephen Holden has called a “primal nostalgia” — a pure longing for roots, home and the safety and security of childhood — couched in memories of American Christmases past. (Berlin embraced and lauded America in many songs that captured our national qualities, values and dreams; his “God Bless America” became the rallying anthem that salved our wounded psyches following the attacks of 9/11.) When I hear “White Christmas,” I often burst into tears. Childhood, nostalgia, longing, indeed.

Then Oland told me that when she writes any song, she begins by remembering that it’s the listeners she’s writing for, whether or not she’s had their feelings or experiences herself. So she channels their presence and imagines her lyrics falling on their ears, as she selects simple and straightforward words that will bridge any gap between them, to be sure she’s conveying her ideas in ways her listeners will understand. And Christmas songs? “Well, Christmas is about love,” Oland told me. And suddenly I got it: I can hear and feel love in Christmas’s music and decorations, in community and church rituals, and of course, in family and friends’ gatherings, because all of these are ways to express and share the comfort and joy that rest at the core of Christmas.

After we parted, I listened to a few of Oland’s Christmas songs, which like Berlin’s chart-topper express love, warmth, and nostalgia. I’m especially fond of “Christmas All Year Long,” which captures my sentiments perfectly: “I've waited all year through / To finally reach December / 'Cause that's when we're reminded / That love is still alive and strong / I'm wishin' it were Christmas — All year long....”* To find and find out more about Pamela Phillips Oland’s wonderful work, check out her website at www.pamoland.com.

* "Christmas All Year Long," Music by Steve Bramson, Lyrics by Pamela Phillips Oland © 2003 Famous Music/Paramount (ASCAP).