RoR: Forum

Crash my damn browser, what a great Christmas gift! Funny til netscape froze to death.

I turn the other cheek with Enya, in Latin:

Adeste Fideles!

Ted Keer

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/18, 9:09pm)

Post 1

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 9:51pm

Ted,
And Adeste Fideles plus an O Tannenbaum to you. I'm curious, how do you put a YouTube video in a post? I can't figure out how you do that.

Post 2

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 10:56pm

Three Hail Mary's and a Glory Be.

(If your browser supports html, cut and paste the "embed" >html< code on the youtube page to the right of the video. Some vidoes have embedding codes deactivated.

Ted

Post 3

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 5:43am

Thanks, Eric! I forwarded that to my rationalist-empiricist friends. Unfortunately, one is actually a drummer, so I left him out...

I think you can find a Newtonmas greeting on RoR. If you google Marotta Newtonmas, you will see that I claim priority.

Mike M.

Post 4

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 5:54am

Enya has a nice voice and all. Except for the fact that her gaelic accent already makes th into t, the only one she got right was Bet-hlelhem. "... rejent anjelorum..." indeed. That and the fact that the song is so cliched in Latin. But, yes, she has a nice voice. Really accomplished.

When we were kids, my brother and I had our own misspoken lyrics.

Venite ignoramus...

... glory to the the nude born king

And of course, everyone knows
We three kings of orient are
smoking on a filter cigar
It was loaded
and it exploded

(Speaking of bah, humbug, Scrooge's problem was that he was a Nonconformist, a presbyterian or something, who did not celebrate the pagan holiday. In Dickens's day, that was changing, with the first Christmas cards, etc. By the 20th century, we rolled all of that wassail and St. Stephen stuff into the others and here we are with "Hannukah bushes" for your assimilated friends.)

Post 5

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 5:16pm

The Natural Selection of Christmas Carols?

=====
(First, LOL, both posts, Mike. It was especially nice of you to be merciful of your drummer friend. I didn't think Enya was all that great, but I couldn't find a better version of Adeste Fideles after searching for quite a while.)
=====

Over all, compared to other "traditional" songs, there actually are a few good Christmas carols, (when well-sung) including "Silent Night," "Oh Holy Night," and "Come Let Us Adore Him." Compared to "Auld Lang Syne," and "My Country T'is of Thee," they seem to have a bit more artistic merit. I don't necessarily think that this implies that Christmas carols are necessarily any better due to their subject matter. Rather, I have long wondered whether the very large number of such songs written, and the time over which they have been sung might actually be a case of Darwinian-like selection, with the better "traditional" songs surviving while most mediocre songs mercifully fade away. I am quite sure there must have been some disco Christmas carols written, but those "memes" probably didn't survive very long. (I particularly look forward to the death of that song by Bob Geldof.) This would be an interesting study for a musicologist, or an great essay by S. J. Gould, where he still with us.

Ted Keer

Post 6

Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 9:56am

Michael,
I love the idea of Newtonmas!

Ted,
I think you are correct that there may be a kind of natural selection process involved in the longevity of certain popular music. Some of it is due to the memorability of a melody and how adaptable it is to other styles. There are also extrinsic factors such as being attached to an event or ritual that keeps the song alive, as in the case of so many holiday songs having a long shelf-life. A song like Amazing Grace has lasted primarily due to the former, while Happy Birthday the latter. In terms of Christmas songs that didn't stick, as the disco tunes you recalled, they probably didn't survive the natural selection process because, though like a parasite they tried to live by being attached to a holiday, they had simultaneously tied themselves to a fleeting fashion. I'm sure there were some traditional carols that were discofied, and that illustrates their adaptability.

Post 7

Friday, December 21, 2007 - 8:15pm

<g> Funny, Eric.

Thursday, December 23, 2010 - 5:10pm