Christmas Sing-along

I didn't want to review a new band today because of the holiday, but I do have something musical to write about.

About six years ago they had a Christmas sing-along at church that we really loved. They projected the lyrics overhead, so you didn't have to know the words. This is important, because a lot of people only know the openings of Christmas songs. There was a funny Saturday Night Live sketch about that where at the interfaith basketball league awards dinner they were trying to sing a carol together. After several false starts only the rabbi (as played by Elliott Gould) was able to sing one through to the end.

Our sing-along had a mix of hymns and traditional songs, and they did add in the Hallelujah Chorus, parts of which were hard to sing, but there were parts that went well enough that everyone could feel pretty good about it.

It was so much fun. We had a great time ourselves, and we invited a friend that we started hanging out with more after, so it was a good evening all around. We hoped they would do it every year.

They changed it. The next year they had what they called a Creche and Carol, where they had various Nativity displays around the building, and different soloists and musical groups performed. Apparently there was some singing along incorporated, but we never went.

Julie asked about it this year, and they had talked about doing something more like the sing-along again. One thing I understood with the other once is that you get higher attendance because more people have assignments. Not only do you get everyone who is signed up to sing, but the various people who would come to hear them sing, and then they hear the other people too.

Julie made it clear that this did not interest her at all. I don't know if that is why they went for a straight sing-along again. I tend to think so, but it may have just been time for a change. They announced it, we were excited, and we went.

The program made me grumpy. There were all of these soloists and instrumental performers and bell ringers listed. I suppose part of that was to increase the involvement again, but also, the part that made me grumpy was this incessant need to make things fancier.

That came through in some of the singing parts too. Here we will have you sing the melody, and here parts. Just sopranos here. Just men here. Those arrangements can sound good, but when you have people being guided and practicing them, it works better then it does in an unrehearsed setting. Also, singing parts takes all the joy out of singing for me. This is not the time to be fancy!

There are two things I need to point out about this. One is that it was still fun. Not quite as fun as if they didn't do all that, but there was still quite a bit of singing, and just singing without having to worry about parts is a very joyful thing. People should do that more. Maybe I need to organize my own sing-along.

The other thing came up on one of the songs. It was listed as a round, which I did not object to. I was thinking it would be "Christmas Bells Are Ringing" as covered by Nat King Cole, but it was a primary song I was unfamiliar with.

The round was okay, but I started thinking how a round could really work on the one I did know, and then I started thinking about what if instead of just the traditional round, the first groups started repeating the last lines, so at the end it was everyone singing "Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong, Christmas Bells are Ringing" really loud and full. So now I was doing it!

I hadn't realized how insidious getting fancy with Christmas music is.