It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Ella Fitzgerald—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

                                                                                It Came Upon a Midnight Clear sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

In churches around the world this evening announcement carols will be central to the services.   Many are bold and glorious whether sung by massed choirs or by congregations that know them by heart.  Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) and the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah are two of the grander examples, although there are plenty of others in Christmas song books.  But my personal favorite is much more modest.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is one of the oldest and most beloved of American Christmas carols.  It also never mentions the Christ Child but instead is all about the announcement that the angles made to the shepherds.  It was a not-so-subtle message for Americans who had just concluded a war that the author considered horribly unjust and immoral.

The Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears, a Unitarian minister wrote the words to It Came Upon a Midnight Clear to celebrate "Peace on earth, goodwill to men" in the wake of the Mexican war.  Its popularity has grown and faded depending on American involvement in other wars.

Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears was the minister of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts in 1849.  It was a small congregation and a not-very-important-pulpit in the insular world of New England Unitarianism.  But like many of his peers Sears had been an ardent opponent of the just concluded Mexican War.  He considered it an indefensible land grab by a powerful nation from a weak one.  It also had ramifications for his opposition to slavery.  The most voracious War Hawks intended the newly conquered lands to eventually enter the Union as slave states and thus swing the balance of power in the nation permanently to the South.  And like other Unitarian ministers, the war confirmed Sears in a growing pacifism.

The war had concluded with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed in February 1848 and ratified by the two nations by that May.  Under its terms Mexico lost nearly half of its territory including all or parts of the future states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

It was still weighing heavily on Sears’ mind when his friend Rev. William Parsons Lunt of First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts asked him to write something for a Sunday school pageant.  Sears played and sang the song to friends and parishioners in his own parlor on Christmas Eve of 1849.  It isn’t known to what tune it was sung.

Sears ever after called carol his “little angels song.”

Dutch painter Govaet Flink based his 1639 painting of the Angels visiting the shepherds on Rembrandt van Rijn's famed etching first issued two years earlier.

The next year Richard Storrs Willis, a composer who trained under Felix Mendelssohn, wrote the melody that quickly became most widely known tune used in the United States.  With that tune it was added to the hymnals of not only the Unitarians, but Universalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and most other Protestant denominations.

But in England and the Commonwealth nations It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is sung to a melody called Noel by Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. 

Ella Fitzgerald's first 1960 Christmas album was an instant classic and she followed it up with a live LP in 1967.  Innumerable compilation albums have been issued based on this material and on recordings made from radio and TV appearances.

Today we will enjoy the version by the great Ella Fitzgerald whose albums of Christmas music have become almost as important to the canon of great holiday recordings as those of Bing Crosby.

The Christmas Yodel Riders in the Sky—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘23

                                                                                Riders in the Sky do their holiday thang...

It’s the Christmas song you didn’t know you had to hear today.  Thank the Riders in the Sky who have virtually single handedly kept old time cowboy music and Western swing on the cultural horizon for more than 40 years.  

Riders in the Sky still tour and regularly play the Woodstock Opera House. 

Santa Claus is Coming to Town Bruce Springsteen—Murfin Winter Holiday Music Festival 2024-‘25

                          A live concert performance of Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Since tiny, teenage Brenda Lee belted out Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree in 1958 there has been a mixed bag of Rock & Roll Christmas music.  That song had the edge of being co-written by Christmas music specialist Johnny Marks, the creator of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  There have been a lot of shots fired at the elusive goal of becoming a seasonal perennial but there have been way more misses than hits.  Although not so ubiquitous as country music stars' Christmas albums, plenty of rockers from Elvis Presley to some death metal bands have tried to get into the game.

Brenda Lee ushered in the era of Rock and Roll Christmas Songs.

In the ‘50s and early ‘60s the most successful holiday sides were basically novelty tunes like Lee’s.  Notably successes included Chuck Berry’s Run, Run Rudolph, rockabilly Bobby Helms’ Jingle Bell Rock, and the Beach Boys’ recasting The Little Duce Coup into The Little Saint Nick.

But that began to change in 1963 with Phil Spector’s wall of sound Christmas album.  It notably included Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love which Rolling Stone rated as the greatest Rock Christmas song of all time.  Unfortunately the album dropped on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and was swamped nearly to oblivion.  None of the songs on the album charted originally.  Over time the album and the song became cult favorites.  It got a huge boost in 1986 when David Letterman featured Love belting out the song on his final new episode before Christmas.  He made it a tradition that lasted 27 years with ever more elaborate productions.

Darlene Love over the years in her annual performance of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) on David Letterman's shows.

The Beatles got into Christmas music with annual almost throw away ditties meant as audio Christmas cards to fans.  Later both John Lennon and Paul McCartney had their own holiday hits.  Lennon’s Happy Xmas (The War is Over) in 1971 was a great rocking protest song and was produced by Phil Spector.  In 1979 McCartney stuck gold with Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, which has made it to Christmas radio play lists but has also been derided as “the worst Christmas song of all time.”  Believe me, it isn’t as long as Dominick the Donkey or The Christmas Shoes still turn up.

                                John Lennon's great Christmas protest song.

For sheer star power and more than a dollop of self-importance nothing matches Irish rocker Bob Geldoph’s assembly of Rock and Pop superstars on Do They Know its Christmas in 1984 to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

Mariah Cary’s diva performance on All I Want For Christmas Is You became the first new Christmas song in years to become a seasonal standard in 1994.  The infectious earworm finally passed Bing Crosby’s White Christmas as the most played holiday song on radio as well as the biggest seller.

There are undoubtedly others that deserve mention.  But for sheer raw Rock & Roll power nothing matches the 1975 live recording of Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band including Little Stevie—Steve Van Zant—and saxophonist Clarence Clemmons.  There is something playful and joyful in this rocker.

Not only was Eddie Cantor's record a huge hit but 500,000 copies of  the sheet music flew off the shelves within a day of his first performance of Santa Claus is Coming to Town on his radio show.

The song long predated Rock & Roll.  It was written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie and became a huge hit for Eddie Cantor after he featured it on his weekly radio program in 1934.  It has been recorded by over 200 artists, including Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, The Crystals, Frank Sinatra, The Temptations,  The Jackson 5, Mariah Carey, Neil Diamond, Chris Isaak, and Michael Bublé.  It was also the title song of the Rankin and Bass 1970 animated TV special with Fred Astaire narrating the origin of Santa Claus.

The song is also the penultimate pop children’s Advent tune awaiting the much anticipated arrival of St. Nick himself.

Bruce Springsteen finishes his live performances in November and December with Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  The audiences sing along and the jams can go on for a long time.

For sheer infectious ebullience, Springsteen’s version blasts all others out of the water.

There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays—The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

                                                                    (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays--The Carpenters.

 Note—The first of a string of two-fers as we reach the peak of the season.

We’ll celebrate what may or may not be the busiest travel day of the holiday season this year with a classic American popular Christmas song by Robert Allen with lyrics by Al Stillman written in 1954. Perry Como had a huge hit with (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays which has become an oft recorded classic.  But no one sang it better than Karen Carpenter.

An Old Fashion Christmas including Home for the Holidays was released after Karen Carpenter's death.

This song is best classified under the secular urban Advent popular holiday music.  Although it sprawls far and wide from city sidewalks it shares the same contemporary feel of post-World War II America with a swinging, spritely style.  It evokes nostalgia without ever getting much more specific than a passing reference to “homemade pumpkin pie” with just repeated references to home.  And even home is not well defined—no reference to mom and dad, the old folks, a farm, village, or city neighborhood.  Home is whatever place you feel connected to in some deep way and whatever family of blood or choice offers welcome.

The “Holidays” were not very specific either.  No mention of Christmas, Hannukah, or New Years.  Maybe Thanksgiving qualified.  Which is why the propagators of War on Christmas nonsense should hate this song if they give it a second thought.

Driving home for the Holidays way out West where your scribe came from circa 1952.

A generation or two earlier most Americans grew up and stayed in the place of their birth or its immediate environs which usually was well stocked with a wide circle of extended family.  But two World Wars, the Great Depression, post-war prosperity, and transportation revolutions had changed that for a great many folks.  The new normal was going away to college or entering the military after high school graduation and then finding a job someplace else and establishing a new nuclear family.  People were expected to go where opportunity beckoned and the corporate culture of the time often required frequent relocations.  Even if you stayed in the same state or general vicinity of “home” chances are that you lived in one of the new sprawling suburbs not the old nabe.

After the war and with the new prosperity, the automobile and modern highways had supplanted the railroads as the main means of getting wherever you were going.  So Home for the Holidays is a song about driving.  If it had been written a decade later with jet air travel at a cost that many could afford, the song might have mentioned busy airports and the places cited might have been too far apart for a day or so road trip.  It was very much a song of its time.

It still works for us, at least for geezers like me, because it makes us nostalgic for that time.  But also, because many of us still have a home we go to for the Holidays—or are the home to which our progeny and descendants come.  

Home for the Holidays was re-recorded in stereo in 1959 for Como's RCA album.

Como released the song on RCA Victor accompanied by Mitchell Ayres’ Orchestra and the Ray Charles Singers.  He showcased it on a Christmas TV special helping to establish that as a long running holiday tradition.  Each edition of the Como Christmas show was sure to feature his biggest holiday hit.  The song registered at #8 on the Cash Box magazine top 50 and made the charts again the next year when it was re-released.  In 1959 Como with the same back-up recorded a new stereo version with a slightly different arrangement by Joe Lipman.  It was successfully released as a single by RCA Victor and included on the top selling album Season’s Greetings from Perry Como as well as on numerous compilation albums.  This is the version commonly heard on Christmas radio and is licensed for TV commercials.

It is also the version that The Carpenters adapted for their 1974 album Christmas Portrait and included on their 1984 LP An Old Fashioned Christmas which was released after Karen’s death.  

O Come, O Come Emmanuel—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

                                                            O Come O Come Emmanuel by Irish New Age diva Enya.

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Advent and time to share the most famous of all Advent hymns, O Come, O Come Emmanuel which also has some of the oldest roots.  As a boy it always perplexed me—who the hell was this Emmanuel, what did he have to do with Christmas, and how did Israel become involved?

It turns out that Emmanuel—from Hebrew meaning “God is With Us” is mentioned almost in passing in the Old Testament Book of Book of Isaiah connected to a war between the Kingdom of Judea and an Assyrian Empire with its vassal the Kingdom of Israel in 735-734 BCE.  One verse said, “The Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  The name, is mentioned a second time that the lands of the “two kings you dread” will be laid waste before the child is old enough to “reject the wrong and choose the right.”  Neither Isaiah nor Jewish scholars connected these prophecies to those predicting the coming of a Messiah. 

But early Christians did, or at least the unknown author the Gospel of Matthew did when an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream.   Joseph was about to end his betrothal to teenage Mary because she was carrying the child of another and told him the child’s divine origin was the fulfillment of Scripture.  

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

So, by these slender threads hung the notion that Emmanuel was another name for Jesus who was also the Messiah, Savior of Humankind, and Son of God.

 

                                                        An Orthodox icon of Emmanuel from 1688.

The text of the song we know was originally written in Latin and paraphrased O antiphons, a series of plainchant antiphons attached to the Magnificat at Vespers over the final days before Christmas. The hymn has its origins over 1,200 years ago in monastic life in the 8th or 9th Century. Seven days before Christmas Eve monks would sing the O antiphons in anticipation of Christmas Eve when the eighth antiphon, O Virgo virginum (O Virgin of Virgins) would be sung before and after Mary’s Canticle, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46b-55). 

John Mason Neal, the English translator for the most commonly used version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

The words and the music of O come, O come, Emmanuel developed separately. A Latin text was first documented in Germany in 1710, but the tune most familiar in the English-speaking world had its origins in 15th Century France.  The 1851 translation by John Mason Neale from Hymns Ancient and Modern is the most prominent by far in the English-speaking world, but other English translations also exist.  Anywhere from four to eight verses are attached to the melody. The hymn text was embraced both a Romantic interest in poetic beauty, Medieval exoticism, and a concern for matching hymns to liturgical seasons and functions rooted in the Oxford Movement of the Church of England.  Despite this pedigree a seven verse version was not included in the official hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  Catholics, Lutherans, and many other Protestant denominations include versions and variants in their hymnals.

Enya--Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin Anglicized as Enya Patricia Brennan

The hymn is now a choral set piece at many Advent services and Christmas concerts.  But today we are featuring a lovely solo version by Irish New Age singer Enya.

 

Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

        

                                                                Jethro Tull's Ring Out the Solstice Bells by Ian Anderson.

Call it Solstice, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, or any name you choose, it is the longest night of the year—the official beginning of Winter. Tomorrow the Sun begins its annual return. Despite claims otherwise, Solstice is the Reason for the Season—the overt or disguised inspiration of most Northern Hemisphere Festivals of Light clustered around this date. To celebrate we turn to Jethro Tull’s classic 1977 album Songs from the Woods, Ian Anderson’s turn from jazz-infused rock to an embrace of his English roots and folk identities is a fitting carol for the day.

Today, the Solstice—the moment in the Northern Hemisphere when has its maximum tilt away from the Sun will occur at 3:21 CST.  You can calculate it for your time zone.

                                         The Holly King rules in the Germanic Yule celebration at Solstice.

In most so-called pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice.  Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun.  Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return.  The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar.  Think pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia.  Either way, those who observe or re-create such rituals have found a way to do so.

Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the Devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the solstice yourself.  

Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Hannukah share the same impulses as Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousin, Meán Geimhridh  beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another.  At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation. 

                                The Moon Goddess is the spirit of Solstice in Celtic-based modern neo-paganism.

Archeological evidence shows that the event—the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the Sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest—was marked, often using physical constructions to capture the rising sun, in Neolithic times across widely separated cultures in Europe, the Near East, Asia, and North America.  Stonehenge is just the most famous example.  

English Druids and other neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice annually at dawn at Stonehenge.

While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing, and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked.  Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still actively discouraged.

Ring out Solstice Bells was included on Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Woods featuring Ian Anderson.

Ian Anderson is a Scottish born multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the creative force behind the innovative and influential British folk/jazz/fusion/progressive rock band Jethro Tull.  Many of the band’s best known songs evoke a magical, even mystical spirit.  That is certainly the case in Ring Out Solstice Bells featuring percussion and Anderson’s signature flute.

White Christmas—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

                                             White Christmas from the finale of the 1954 MGM film of the same name.

Tomorrow Kathy Brady-Murfin and I will be taking in perhaps the most iconic of the classic Golden Age of American Secular Christmas songs,  a production of the stage version of Irving Berlins’s White Christmas at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire.  It was at least the third production of a version of the classic film we have seen.  It is a staple of both the professional and community holiday theater.  It is both comfortable and an invitation to sing along.

The leads in the Marriott Theater production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas.

You probably know that the most played and beloved secular American Christmas song—White Christmas—was first featured in the 1942 movie musical Holiday Inn. It was not one of the elaborate production numbers but was a simple parlor piano duet by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds.  It was not expected to be a hit, but it struck a deep chord with American GIs far from home.  The rest is history.

The idea of a film based on a country inn that opened as an entertainment venue only on holidays was Irving Berlin’s own.  So was the idea of writing original songs for each holiday.  Eventually he penned 12 new songs including White Christmas and another soon-to-be seasonal classic Happy Holidays.  Also included in the film was Easter Parade, written by Berlin for the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer.

Berlin signed with Paramount Pictures in 1940 to write the songs for a film based on his story idea.  The studio intended it to showcase its most bankable star—Bing Crosby.  The studio signed Mark Sandrich, who helmed four of the great Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers musicals at RKO.  He brought Astaire along, on loan from his studio for a dream team matchup of two of the biggest movie musical stars.

White Christmas was introduced in 1942's Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn.

Casting the female lead was trickier.  Paramount, not the richest of studios, already faced a big payroll with its stars, Irving Berlin and Sandrich plus the costs of the elaborate production numbers, could not afford an A list star who they would have likely had to borrow from a major studio.  After rummaging around the role of Linda Mason, the fresh-faced wanna-be performer, went to Marjorie Reynolds, a starlet rather than a star, who had mostly worked in two-reel Westerns with the likes of Tex Ritter and young Roy Rogers.  Famous or not Reynolds, turned out to be a lovely singer and accomplished dancer who had no trouble keeping up with the men. 

The second female lead went to an even lesser known performer, Virginia Dale, a former Miss California and a hoofer as the faithless Lila Dixon.

The film premiered on August 4, 1942 and was an immediate hit—Paramount’s top grossing film of the year.  It easily returned its hefty $3.2 million budget.  The music from the show also did well.  As expected the Valentine’s Day romantic ballad Be Careful, It’s My Heart did well even if it never exactly became a Berlin standard.  But White Christmas really took off after a slow start breaking into the Billboard chart in late October and staying at or near the top for the next 11 weeks.  It went on to win the 1943 Academy Award for Best Song.

The Decca Records studio recordings of songs from the film was issued in a 78 rpm album but did not include the original female stars.  White Christmas from this album was later released as a single and became a legendary success.

Crosby’s studio recording of the song originally included in a Decca 78 rpm album of songs from the show was released as a single and sold so briskly that it damaged the master recording and Crosby had to go back in the studio to rerecord it in 1947.  That version easily became a #1 hit and is the one most heard today.  In 1949 Crosby included it in his Merry Christmas album which has never gone out of issue.  It became the title song of the 1954 Technicolor film White Christmas starring Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kay, and Vera-Ellen, another all-Irving Berlin musical that became a holiday classic of its own.

Crosby in his Santa hat graced the covers of countless LPs, singles, and CDs.

Taken together sales the 1942 and ’47 versions of the song are estimated 50 million copies, the most by any release and the biggest-selling single worldwide of all time.  It returned to the Billboard Pop Chart twenty times before the magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases.  It retained it’s top Christmas recording status until Maria Carey’s ubiquitous All I Want for Christmas is You.

White Christmas is also the most recorded song of all time with over 500 covers by other artists, several of which became hits in their own right.