Christmas Music and Traditions in America – Voice of America Radio Transcript

Spirit of the Season: Christmas Music and Traditions in America

A music-filled program looking at how Americans observe the most widely celebrated religious holiday in the United States.

Transcript of the VOA Broadcast

12/22/2008

Millions of Americans will celebrate Christmas on December twenty-fifth. It is the most widely celebrated religious holiday in the United States. For the past few weeks, Americans have been preparing for Christmas. I’m Bob Doughty. Shirley Griffith and Ray Freeman tell us about American Christmas traditions and music on the VOA Special English program THIS IS AMERICA.

(MUSIC: “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” the Canadian Brass)

VOICE ONE:

People have been buying gifts to give to family members and friends. They have been filling homes and stores with evergreen trees and bright, colored lights. They have been going to parties and preparing special Christmas foods. Many people think Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Johnny Mathis thinks so, too.

(MUSIC: “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”)

VOICE TWO:

Many Christians will go to church the night before the holiday or on Christmas Day. They will celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus Christ. Christian ministers will speak about the need for peace and understanding in the world. This is the spiritual message of Christmas. Church services will include traditional religious songs for the holiday.

One of the most popular is this one, “Silent Night.” Here it is sung by Joan Baez.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Many other Americans will celebrate Christmas as an important, but non-religious, holiday. To all, however, it is a special day of family, food, and exchanging gifts.

Christmas is probably the most special day of the year for children. One thing that makes it special is the popular tradition of Santa Claus.

Young children believe that Santa Claus is a fat, kind, old man in a red suit with white fur. They believe that — on the night before Christmas — he travels through the air in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. He enters each house from the top by sliding down the hole in the fireplace. He leaves gifts for the children under the Christmas tree.

Here, Bruce Springsteen sings about Santa Claus.

(MUSIC: “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”)

VOICE TWO:

Americans spend a lot of time and money buying Christmas presents.

VOICE ONE:

Some people object to all this spending. They say it is not the real meaning of Christmas. So, they celebrate in other ways. For example, they make Christmas presents, instead of buying them. Or they volunteer to help serve meals to people who have no homes. Or they give money to organizations that help poor people in the United Statesand around the world.

VOICE TWO:

Home and family are the center of the Christmas holiday. For many people, the most enjoyable tradition is buying a Christmas tree and decorating it with lights and beautiful objects. On Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, people gather around the tree to open their presents.

Another important Christmas tradition involves food. Families prepare many kinds of holiday foods, especially sweets. They eat these foods on the night before Christmas and on Christmas day.

For many people, Christmas means traveling long distances to be with their families. Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack sing about this holiday tradition.

(MUSIC: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”)

VOICE ONE:

Another Christmas tradition is to go caroling. A group of people walks along the street. At each house, they stop and sing a Christmas song, called a carol. Student groups also sing carols at schools and shopping centers. Let us listen to the choir of Trinity Church in Bostonsing “Carol of the Bells.”

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Not everyone in the United States celebrates Christmas. Members of the Jewish and Muslim religions, for example, generally do not. Jewish people celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah. And some black Americans observe another holiday, Kwanzaa. Yet many Americans do take part in some of the traditional performances of the season.

One of the most popular is a story told in dance: “The Nutcracker” ballet. The music was written by Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in eighteen ninety-one.

VOICE ONE:

The ballet is about a young girl named Clara. Clara is celebrating Christmas with her family and friends. One of her Christmas presents is a little device to open nuts — a nutcracker. It is shaped like a toy soldier. She dreams that the nutcracker comes to life as a good-looking prince.

Professional dance groups in many American cities perform the ballet at this time of year. They often use students from local ballet schools to dance the part of Clara and the other children in the story. This gives parents a chance to see their children perform.

VOICE TWO:

We leave you with “The Waltz of the Flowers” from “The Nutcracker.” It is played by the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Eugene Ormandy.

VOICE ONE:

Today’s program was written by Shelley Gollust. It was produced and directed by Lawan Davis. I’m Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another report about life in the United Stateson the VOA Special English program THIS IS AMERICA.

Listen to the VOA Broadcast

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Top 5 Christmas Myths by Rink Shenkman

Macy’s Christmas Window Display

Top 5 Myths About Christmas

by Rick Shenkman

Mr. Shenkman is the editor of HNN. (History News Network  http://www.hnn.us)

#1 Myth

Retailers Have Ruined Christmas By Commercializing It

Until retailers began to see in Christmas the opportunity to market their merchandise the holiday attracted little of the attention it does now. It was retailers who made Christmas exciting. It was they who turned Santa Claus into a national icon. Montgomery Ward gave us Rudolf the red-nosedreindeer. Coca-Cola helped popularize the smiling Santa. Retailers discovered the commercial possibilities of Christmas after the Civil War. Only then did newspapers regularly begin to feature advertising sales associated with the holiday.

Retailers helped establish Christmas as an American tradition by persuading Protestants to overcome centuries of hostility to the holiday, which had long been identified as a popish import. The leaders of theMassachusetts Bay Colony so disdained Christmas that in 1659 they passed a law prohibiting the public celebration of the holiday, punishing”anybody who is found observing [it], by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way.” The law was repealed 25 years later, but the prejudice against Christmas remained strong. Judge Samuel Sewall was delighted to be able to report in his diary in 1685 that he did not see a single person celebrating the holiday.

#2 Myth

Christmas Cards Are a Venerable Tradition

Yes, Virginia, Christmas cards are venerable. But it was the Victorian businessman who made the Christmas card an American tradition.Before the middle of the 19th century Americans simply did not send holiday greeting cards at Christmas.

#3 Myth

Clement MooreWrote the Poem,”The Night Before Christmas”

Several years ago Vassar professor and professional debunker Don Foster concluded that Mooredid not write the famous 1822 poem with which he is so identified. Foster claimed, according to an account in the New York Times in 2000, that the poem’s”spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.” Foster speculated that the poem was actually written by Henry Livingston, Jr., an author from Poughkeepsie(where Vassar happens to be located).

The story made a big splash in the newspapers. It was then promptly forgotten. The same cannot be said of the poem.

#4 Myth

Christmas Trees Are Traditional

The Christmas tree first made its appearance in America in themiddle of the 18th century, thanks to German immigrants. But a hundred years later it was still rare. In 1851 a Cleveland, Ohio reverend who had recently emigrated from Germany put up a Christmas tree in his local church. He was roundly condemned. Nobody before had ever put up a Christmas tree in an American church. Victorians in the latter half of the 19th century slowly began adopting the German tradition, but the Christmas tree remained controversial. In the 1880s the New York Timeseditorialized against the Christmas tree. When Teddy Roosevelt became president he denounced the practice of cutting down trees for Christmas. Good conservationist that he was, he declared the practice a waste of timber.

#5 Myth

Santa Was Always Fat and Jolly

Whether he was a Dutch creation, as so many believe, is,according to scholar Eric C. Wolf, doubtful.”There is no evidence,” says Wolf,”that the Santa Claus myth existed in New Amsterdam, or for a century after English occupation.” To be sure, Santa is loosely based on the European figure, St. Nick, the fourth century Bishop of Demre, Turkey, who was said to have carried a sack full of toys for children. But it was only after the Revolution, when writers began inventing American traditions, that Santa suddenly achieved broad popularity. The myth was slow to build. Not until 1821 was Santa seen flying in the sky behind a pack of reindeer. Only in 1837 do we find evidence that he arrived in American homes via the chimney. And not until the Civil War did Santa look the way we imagine him. In colonial days he was often described as thin and beardless. In 1809 Washington Irving imagined Santa as a bulky man who smoked a pipe and wore a Dutch broad-brimmed hat and baggy breeches. Later, Santa was depicted as a fat man with brown hair and a big smile. Then in 1863 Thomas Nast gave us our modern idea of Santa Claus, as a jolly fat man with a flowing white beard dressed in a red suit.

– See more at: http://hnn.us/article/479#sthash.PJeqG2HA.dpuf

This blog is written and published by DLF Music Transfer, LLC  dba Christmas LPs to CD.  For more information on Christmas music or to purchase CDs of classic Christmas records on CD, please visit our website www.christmaslpstocd.com , call us 888-384-6970, or e-mail us david@dlfmusic.com.