Friday, December 11, 2009

Do They Know It's Christmas Time?


I attended my son's Winter Celebrations concert at school today. Based on the name of the concert (and is it me or does it sound like some sort of a pagan festival?) I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that he and his fellow 4th grade classmates did not sing a single traditional holiday song. Not one.

WARNING: This is not one of those crazy keep-Christ-in-Christmas rants. Au contraire...I'm all about Christmas commercialism. I like Santa, I like presents and I like Christmas trees. I like lights, I like decorations and I like holiday parties. And the thing that I like most about the holiday season...are the songs.

I love to sing. I'm not a good singer, but that does not stop me from singing at the top of my lungs. All. The. Time. I constantly break out into song (much to the dismay of those around me). My sister thinks that I have some sort of musical Turrets Syndrome. Honestly, sometimes I cannot stop. And when I don't know the words to a song, I simply make them up.

So imagine my disappointment when I couldn't sing along with the kids today. It was like going to a Springsteen concert and not hearing Born to Run. I'm not suggesting that they sing The First Noel or O Holy Night, but there are traditional holiday songs about secular Christmas themes such as winter scenes and family gatherings that appeal to the masses without trampling on people's religious beliefs. How about Winter Wonderland? Let It Snow? Frosty the Snowman?

Maybe I was expecting more because I am a little depressed about Glee wrapping up this week. (I am going to miss singing along with the cast.) But something tells me that if McKinley's Glee Club director, Mr. Shue, was in charge of today's set list, I would be singing and humming right now instead of blogging. I'm just sayin'.

It's not the the kids didn't do a great job - they absolutely did. And it's not that I didn't enjoy myself - because I did. It's just that I wish the concert had more traditional holiday spirit. I wish I had left school whistling one of my holiday favorites.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Much to the dismay of your CHILDREN!

Eva said...

Hi, I just wrote a comment about your post "Chupacabra". Strange things are going on here in Sweden. People get strange scratch marks...

(I have just started to move over my material to another blog where I write in english. But today you find most of the pictures on the swedish blog)

Eva said...

Hi, I just wrote a comment about your post "Chupacabra". Strange things are going on here in Sweden. People get strange scratch marks...

(I have just started to move over my material to another blog where I write in english. But today you find most of the pictures on the swedish blog)