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There’s this record album with this one particular song in it, and I can’t get it out of my mind.
“‘C’ is for the Christ child, born upon this day.
“‘H’ for herald angels in the sky ...”
The lyrics are available on the ‘Net., but didn’t need to look them up; they are in my memory, remarkably and eternally at the forefront of what I know.
The name of the song is “C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S.” It was on a Christmas album by Perry Como. My mom had a bunch of 33 1/3-rpm albums (hard to believe that you have to explain that to people these days), and many of them were Christmas albums. That Perry Como album was the favorite of a young boy growing up, and that song in particular stands out.
“‘R’ means our redeemer. ‘I’ means Israel.
“‘S’ is for the star that shone so bright ...”
The song was written by Eddy Arnold, which is something I did not know about it until I went looking. Eddy Arnold was a smoother-than-smooth country singer who died last year at the age of 90. His biggest hit was “Make the World Go Away”; when compiling a list of somebody-done-me-wrong songs, “Make the World Go Away” is right there at the top. So it was kind of interesting to find that this man also wrote this song about what Christmas means.
“‘T’ is for three wise men, they who traveled far.
“‘M’ is for the manger where he lay ...”
American society has debated where to place Christmas on the secular/religious scale, and will continue to do that throughout the next several years — and then the debate will start all over again. The idea of “Happy Holidays” and “the holiday season” eclipsing “Merry Christmas” has peaked, in my estimation; “M.C.” is back in full force. The only exception to that statement is television, where “Happy Holidays” is still the norm. (Presidents’ Day? Columbus Day? National Take Your Daughter to Work Day? Which holidays are they talking about, anyway?)
“C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S” isn’t played a whole lot during the Christmas season (the holiday season?) these days, which is too bad, really. It’s a succinct statement of faith. It’s actually a doctrinal treatise. We have a mention of Christ as redeemer. We have the historic connection to Israel. And then there’s the conclusion of the song:
“‘A’ is for all he stands for. ‘S’ means shepherds came.
“And that’s why there’s a Christmas Day.”
The problem with being concise is that you lack depth. I need look no further than political advertisements, where candidates and advocacy groups will try to move you to action (“call your congressman today”) about complicated issues in 30 seconds or less. It can’t be done — not truthfully, anyway.
Conciseness does have a virtue, however. With the ever-decreasing American attention span, we don’t have a lot of time to tell people what’s what.
Decades after he first wrote it, Eddy Arnold’s “C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S” has increased in value. I commend it for your listening.
And one more thing: Merry Christmas. I really mean that.
daves@news-banner.com
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