Return to the Canon of Christmas Songs

Dec 09, 2011 07:33

Today in XKCD #988, Randall Munroe illustrates the point I was making in "Canon of Christmas Songs: Well Gone Dry?" back in 2000 ( Read more... )

music, christmas

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mmcirvin December 9 2011, 13:40:19 UTC
I was surprised to learn that "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" is also in the 1970s bin.

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ritaxis December 9 2011, 14:20:57 UTC
I heard a song this morning that was new to me, but it turned out to be a Carpenters song.

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polyfrog December 9 2011, 14:26:31 UTC
There are several Christmas songs that I have on my "Best Christmas Evar!" playlist that don't fit this graph. But my playlist is not popular culture, and I go out of my way to seek out new Christmas records every year, listen to them, extract the best songs and move on.

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stickmaker December 9 2011, 14:34:46 UTC


I was surprised none of those are actual carols. That would greatly alter the graph, since some of those are centuries old.

Also, there are many holiday songs which were popular in the Baby Boom decade-plus which are rarely if ever heard today. (You can thank my Mother's record collection for this.)

Finally, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" are lyrics from "The Christmas Song" co-written by Mel Torme:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Torm%C3%A9

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tceisele December 9 2011, 14:35:16 UTC
I wonder if it's just a case of saturation: we already have what most people consider "enough" Christmas songs, and so there isn't really much of a niche to add new ones. Getting some new ones really popular would therefore entail retiring some of the old ones. And, since they don't actually become obsolete, that's really hard to do.

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