Merry (well, not Christmas) holidays
WASHINGTON – It’s December, so like every year I’ve been walking around cursing my to-do list and humming “White Christmas.” I really am always wishing for one, but this season the tune’s been looping through my brain more than usual because my 10-year-old has been practicing it nonstop for her solo in the annual Christmas winter concert program at her Alexandria, Va., grade school.
The first snow of the season was still three days off, though, when she came home one afternoon sputtering with frustration. Her solo had been scratched, she informed me, with tears falling at blizzard speed. The school administration thought the program needed more diversity, and so it came to pass that “White Christmas” was whited out.
After giving my verklempt would-be soloist a brief maternal lecture about the Establishment Clause, diversity and how Sometimes You Have to Just Suck It Up, I called the principal to get the scoop. This kind and weary woman explained to me that she was simply trying to balance the program, which included songs from other traditions.
“It had too many songs with Christmas in them,” she said. She had to find a way to acknowledge Yule without making the whole thing about, well, Yule.
It was a tough edit. Along with “White Christmas,” she gave Mel Torme’s loungey “Christmas Song” the hook. (I’m guessing the roasting chestnuts and that nippy Jack Frost were OK, but the Santa reference put it over the wall that separates church from state.) An Italian Nativity carol was beyond the pale of course, references to the book of St. Matthew in whatever language being far too religious for the public schools. “Feliz Navidad,” however, made the cut; I can only speculate that its diversity quotient (Hispanic) outweighed its Christian quotient (Happy Christmas).
The whole thing seems outrageous to the fifth-graders, but to lots of us parents it feels oddly familiar. It’s the same cautious instinct that causes us to reach for the tasteful holly-bedecked cards that say “Season’s Greetings” instead of the 16th-century Madonnas with their exhortations to have “A Blessed Christmas.” Hey, even President Bush left Christmas out of his Christmas card.
But here’s the irony: The Christmas song that got the boot isn’t even really about Christmas. With its gentle melody, strangely modern phrasing and themes of homesickness and memory, “White Christmas” is about the nostalgic and romantic virtues of … a snowy landscape. A little known prelude puts the singer in sunny “Beverly Hills, L.A.,” but longing “to be up north.” As my tearful kid said, “It’s about weather.”
Historians of popular music will tell you that before the four-stanza tune (of which composer Irving Berlin told his secretary, “Not only is this the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote”), there was no American tradition of secular Christmas music.
Think: Before 1940, we were stuck with medieval carols, churchy tunes about shepherds and angels, and stately British imports like “I Saw Three Ships” or “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.” Berlin’s little ditty cut a track through the snow for such secular classics as “Silver Bells” (theme: shopping), “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (seduction) and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (elder abuse).
Nowadays, though, when grade school musical programs run afoul of the Diversity Mandate, “Let it Snow” and “Winter Wonderland” are going to be the only weather-related tunes on the menu.
It’s not a good thing – well, it’s illegal – to push religion in the schools. But now, the word “Christmas” itself is being eliminated wherever possible to avoid offense. December concerts have become “Winter Festivals” and “Holiday Programs.”
“We Wish You a Merry Christmas” ends with “We wish you a happy holiday,” or includes similar hopes for a “Happy Hanukkah” and “Joyous Kwanzaa.”
This was my kid’s first conscious encounter with this type of public editing, and she didn’t get it.
“It’s the principle of the thing, Mommy,” she fumed.
I had to agree with her. All in all, a sense of fairness, inclusivity and righteous fear of offense has come over the land. And this is a good thing. But the mandate to reflect our vast, diverse, multi-culti stew without promoting a dominant culture has also bred a paralyzing need to neuter our public language. And this is not a good thing – especially when it comes to grade school musical programs. A certain earlier chronicler of Christmas might have called it a “Bah, humbug” kind of trend.
I am sure the school concert will be just lovely anyhow. And so I am wishing that everyone’s days be merry and bright, and that all their winter holidays, special events and culturally appropriate seasonal traditions be white.