Hum it, sing it or just nod your head as the music plays “Sleigh Bells Ring” or “The First Noel. ” Like most of the old Christmas songs and carols, they are familiar within the first few notes. These are songs of the season, a part of our common culture. For decades Christmas carols and songs have started filling the air before we finished off the Halloween candy.
We may not admit it, but we welcome the return of seasonal music, even if the calendar says we have several weeks to go before Dec. 25 because we crave the sense of community the songs bring. The songs are a part of cultural rituals we are drawn toward.
Whether your favorite holiday song features a warbling chorus of Peanuts characters accompanied by a toy piano or a pitch-perfect boys’ choir accompanied by a Steinway, the songs of the season have a way of bringing us together, particularly in Western culture, says Jeffrey Sharkey, Director of the Peabody Institute at The Johns Hopkins University.
Carols have a particular place in people’s hearts because they are one of the rituals of the season. Maybe one of the most important rituals, it turns out. Sharkey says, “We take comfort in ritual, in hearing familiar songs, familiar melodies expressing familiar sentiments at a particular time of year. It is something that both brings us together and binds us together.”
Ask Dr. Ruth Westheimer, iconic radio sex therapist, about the binding quality of common music. In a seminar about Jewish music, I heard her relate the story of her childhood when her father was taken away by SS soldiers when she was 10. Her mother and grandmother, realizing the dangers in Germany, put the young Ruth aboard an evacuation train full of children headed for Switzerland.
On that train filled with children newly ripped from their families, the young Ruth took charge. She said she realized the one way to bring them together was to sing their common songs. So she began singing the songs they had learned at school. One by one the children of all ages stopped crying and began singing along, even as the train took them farther away from families. Singing together the familiar songs served to fill them with courage to face the unknown that lay ahead.
How is it that familiar songs bind us together? Songs like “Silent Night” and “Deck the Halls” are anchors to our past experiences. They provide guideposts for the season. Hearing those first few familiar notes of “Joy to the World” frees us up to recognize the season and enjoy a common set of memories.
Researchers say singing and listening to familiar songs creates a synergy with others, an “acting out” of familiar thoughts or beliefs. As we share in hearing or singing our common holiday songs, we feel a sense of belonging to community, to a larger circle of people.
Today schools and offices and communities are cowering under threats tied to the traditions and rituals of American Christmas. We are told that someone might be offended by a song or something with the word Christmas in it. Traditionally, Americans heard the same songs on the radio and TV as well as at school, church, club meetings and community gatherings. No longer. We are losing a common bond and a cultural identity that serves a good purpose, the very thing young Dr. Ruth Westheimer understood amid a trainload of frightened children.
In a world of fast changes and commercialism, it seems we might need the common music of the season more than ever. Be sure you find a way to share those traditional carols and songs! Sing out!