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Ricochet Christmas Music Fight Club: The Final Battle for Eternal RCMFC Glory!
Like the Ricochet Movie Fight Club of happy memory and the Ricochet Dueling Book Club, the Ricochet Christmas Music Fight Club is a place for fighting to the death over who has the best answer to a selected question of the week. I’ve been post the RCMFC around Friday or Saturday each week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whoever’s answer gets the most likes wins!
The winner of the first four fights selected the question for the following week, but the winner of this fight will have only the reward of the eternal glory of winning this magnificent Christmas battle.
But, in addition to the joys of verbal combat, let’s remember that the RCMFC is meant to be a place for sharing beautiful Christmas music. Let’s have fun!
Last week’s battle saw MeandurΦ victorious with “G-d Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” This week, MeandurΦ asks us:
What is the best non-Christmas song that was repurposed as a Christmas song?
You know what to do now: Answer the question, and fight about it!
(Reminders: Fight, but don’t be a jerk. And share some Christmas joy even if we are pretending to be fighting!)
Published in General
Got to be “Jingle Bells” which I believe was for Thanksgiving but I’m going to look it up.
Maybe Thanksgiving or maybe not, but according to Wikipedia it wasn’t written as a Christmas Song so it counts: “It has been claimed that it was originally written to be sung by a Sunday school choir for Thanksgiving, or as a drinking song.[3] Although it has no original connection to Christmas,[4] it became associated with winter and Christmas music in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s.[5] “
How do we play this? If I understand rightly, Advent ends at Christmas Day, when the 12 Days start. Advent is the time of waiting, coming, anticipation. Christmas is the time of arrival.
So “O Come O Come, Emmanuel” should qualify.
Then again, if we use the contemporary Just Christmas approach, then “Good King Wenceslas” qualifies as a Boxing Day song.
And “Carol of the Bells” as originally a New Year’s song–right?–would also qualify.
I guess . . . we vote on it with likes!
(Take one of these ideas if you like them! I don’t need to win any of these things. I’m just glad they’re working out. But if anyone wants fighting from me, then I say PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA ARE LOSERS! Looooosers!)
The theme from Die Hard?
Which reminds me: “Ode to Joy” seems like a perfect answer if it wasn’t originally a Christmas song.
The Star of the County Down turned into the Canticle of the Turning
AC/DC ‘s Hells Bells
Handel’s Messiah. First performed April 13, 1742.
Easter music.
Now that even beats Beethoven and Die Hard and “Good King Wenceslas”!
Greensleeves –> What Child is This.
Final answer.
Joy to the World written by Isaac Watts about the Second Coming of Christ, not the First (e.g., Christmas.)
Final answer.
Specifically, the Hallelujah Chorus.
“Deck the Halls” is about Yule, not Christmas, but I don’t think it’s the best. Still thinking.
Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
Ode to Joy is my pick
Panis Angelicus. This appears on Josh Groban’s Christmas album, which was my introduction to Mr. Groban.
Certainly not a specifically Christmas song. It appears in a book of sheet music for weddings that we have.
Final answer.
this is the one that I first thought of
I had no idea. Golly, there are some great answers in here.
I saw Handel and the Messiahs open for the Pogues at Temple Bar in ’39.
Щедрик / Shchedryk. Aka Carol of the Bells.
I learned about it today, after getting nostalgic for the days in the mid 1960s, after we moved to Minnesota, when my mother would listen to high school a cappella choirs on the TV station which broadcast from Alexandria, Minnesota (the only TV station we could get reliably). In those days I think the choirs had to make a trip to the TV station to do their performances. Some of those small school high school choirs in Minnesota were quite good. It may have been the influence of all those German and Scandinavian Lutherans in the communities.
I was wishing I could listen to some high school choirs like that again. I think they were my first exposure to songs like Carol of the Bells.
And about the time I was bringing that back to my memory, the YouTube algorithm showed me this video:
I learned that Carol of the Bells was originally a Ukrainian folk chant for the New Year, and goes back to pagan times. The reference to swallows and the birth of lambs goes back to the days when the new year was celebrated in springtime.
At the end of World War I, Ukraine was trying to regain independence, along with Poland, the Baltic countries, Finland, and Czechoslovakia. But as is happening now, Russia wanted no such thing right on its borders, especially in the case of Ukraine. Nor did the White Russians, who could have been allies against the Bolsheviks, but wanted the old empire back. The new Republic of Ukraine realized that it needed to gain European and world support, and quickly formed a choir that would tour the world to make people more
conscienceconscious of the existence of Ukraine as a separate country. Shchedryk was one of the songs in its repertoire, having already been arranged into its current melody by a small-town Ukrainian composer. Its first performance was in Prague in 1919.All of this PR work was too late to stop the Bolsheviks from taking over the country, and after a brief fake reprieve from Lenin, the Russians went back to their old work of stamping out any sense of Ukrainian culture and identity. The choir never returned to Ukraine and kept touring, reaching Carnegie Hall in 1922. School choir directors soon learned of the song and asked to have the music. It quickly gained popularity as a Christmas song in the United States. It even reached my ears around 1964. (As often happens, I was probably the last to know.)
Here is a version with the original pagan lyrics, in both English and Ukrainian.
Not a Christmas song in my book. It is beautiful. Currently my choice for the Communion song at my Mass of Christian Burial. Bread of Angels is the Eucharist so in the sense that there is no Eucharist without the birth of Jesus then it might be considered a Christmas song. As for weddings, it sounds like an alternative to Ave Maria. I find it odd when included in a non-Catholic wedding but always appreciate it. I guess cuz it’s in Latin no one knows what the words are?
I don’t mind the Messiah being played at Christmas – well I do but I’m trying to be more open-minded. I really mind that be it is not played at Easter. It is definitely Easter music. I listen to the middle section during Lent and the whole in the Easter season. In these days, unfortunately, it would probably not be heard much at all if it hadn’t become a Christmas tradition. (See being more open-minded above.)
As part of the co-opting of the local beliefs/traditions by Christianity (yeah!), this is a beautiful example.
Easter was in March in 1742. Maybe George was aiming at Ascension or Pentecost. Post-Easter music.
Well, I know it’s not this one, even though the University Women’s Chorus jammed this thing into the Christmas Concert we went to a couple weeks ago:
Easter season is 40 days so post-Easter day but not season
I was going to ask yesterday why I have been seeing “What a Wonderful World” on more than a couple Christmas albums and playlists. So I’ll ask it today. Is it becoming associated with Christmas? And if so, why?
Veni, Veni Emmanuel is an Advent song so should not be sung after Christmas Midnight Mass. Good King Wenceslas is St. Stephen’s Day hymn and should definitely be sung on December 26. We 3 Kings is an Epiphany hymn and should definitely be sung on January 6 (or whatever day the Church moves Epiphany to – don’t get me started on messing up the 12 days. 😠
If it’s any comfort to you, I know some elderly ladies at our church who like them, including one of the organists.
It is a great, little song about loving everyone so I think that’s why it’s become associated with Christmas. I got to admit I still choke up when I hear it sung by Louie Armstrong.