Opinion: To be honest, I get far more of a kick from the new, culturally sensitive "holiday concert" than I ever did from the old-school Christmas concert.
Instead of the same old carols and seasonal favourites year in, year out, one never knows what new horror of an unseasonal favourite the sensitivity police will choose to inflict on the crowd. At my daughter's school, the holiday concert concluded with John Lennon's Imagine. The school had thoughtfully printed the lyrics on the programme, and the teacher, inviting the parents to sing along, declared the number summed up what we were all "praying" for. Indeed.
The droning vamp began, and John's anthem for cotton-candy nihilists rent the air: "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people, Living for today." Ah, that's the message of the season, isn't it? Back in the 60s, John opined that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ, which was a wee bit controversial in those unenlightened times but which appears to be no more than a prosaic statement of fact as far as the music department's priorities are concerned. These days, Imagine has achieved the status of secular hymn, no doubt because of its inclusive message: "Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too." Hey, happy holidays! The last time I heard those words was when I switched on the TV and saw a half-Jewish/half-Arab choir backing Bill Clinton who was up on stage crooning them down the cleavage of some hot Zionist babe as the lounge act at Shimon Peres's birthday party.
I hope, despite John Lennon, there's a heaven and hell because I like to think that, in one or the other, he caught the show and roared his head off. You may say he's a dreamer, but he's not. A few years ago, there was a little flurry of stories about how Lennon was a very generous contributor not just to organisations that support and fund the IRA, but possibly to the IRA itself. How heartening to know that, though he grew rich peddling illusory pap to the masses, he didn't fall for it himself.
Alas, at my daughter's concert, Imagine didn't go over wild with the parents, who mumbled along unenthusiastically. To be honest, I'd prefer John and Yoko's peacenik dirge, (Happy Xmas) War Is Over, though that might be a little premature, and anyway that song suffers from the disadvantage of mentioning Xmas. On the radio you can hear Frosty and Rudolph and James Taylor's melancholy post-9/11 version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, but rare is the schoolhouse that lets its young charges take a crack at the standard repertoire.
On balance, I prefer the approach of the London Borough of Brent, one of Britain's sternest loony-left councils but far more sporting than the Scrooge-packed school boards across the Atlantic. Back in the 80s, Brent decreed that it would permit municipal performances of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus as long as they were accompanied by a couple of non-heterosexist choruses of I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus. That's a lot less vicious than replacing the entire seasonal songbook with obscurantist drones for solstice-worshippers. Anyone can St-Nix Santa Claus Is Coming To Town; the hard part is finding something to put in its place.
There are very few good Hannukah songs, never mind Kwanza or the Islamic festivals of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The reason for the dearth of Hanukkah songs is that for most of the last century the big-time musical Jews were too busy cranking out Christmas songs. To name but a few, Irving Berlin wrote White Christmas, Mel Torme wrote The Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire), and Mitchell Parish Sleigh Ride. As far as I know, the only Christian to offer to return the compliment was the stiff-necked Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (whose Come To The Manger has been recorded by Donny Osmond). Sen Hatch confirmed to me during his short-lived presidential campaign in 1999 that he was working on a Hanukkah song. I don't know whether he's finished it, but I would have to say on balance that, musically speaking, the Christians got the better end of this deal.
The Jews - the Ellis Island/Lower East Side generation - were merely the latest contributors to the American Christmas. For their first two centuries on this continent, the Anglo-Celtic settlers attached no significance to Christmas: it was another working day, unless it fell on a Sunday, in which case one went to church. It was later waves of immigrants - the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians - who introduced most of the standard features we know today: trees, cards, Santa. Nothing embodies the American idea - e pluribus unum - better than the American Christmas. This is genuine multiculturalism: if the worry is separation of church and state, the North American Christmas is surely the most successful separation you could devise - Jesus, Mary and Joseph are for home and church; the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty for school and mall.
But the new multiculturalism prefers to celebrate our differences, no matter the effort required to manufacture them, and so somehow Santa, despite a Taliban-sized beard, and Frosty, the ultimate white male, have become suspect, too. It's no longer about the separation of church and state so much as the separation of neighbour from neighbour, the denial of the very possibility of a shared culture.
We don't have popular "popular culture" any more, but those old-time seasonal songs crossed all boundaries. The Mariah Carey, Placido Domingo, Reba McEntire, Motown, Bruce Springsteen, and Jessye Norman Christmas CDs all draw from the same limited repertoire - from Winter Wonderland to Silver Bells. In a time when radio stations are ever more narrowly programmed, these are the last songs we all share, and so they naturally run afoul of the hyphen-crazed segregationalists who insist that the only thing we have in common is our lack of anything in common. Even the PC schoolmarms understand that's insufficient - hence the need to elevate Imagine to anthemic status in the communal songbook. I don't want to live in John Lennon's world without countries and religions - neither did he, in his more honest moments. But a wartime Christmas especially is a time to think about what binds us: if you feel "offended" by songs about snowmen and sleighs and donning one's gay apparel, then maybe you're the one with the problem. Imagine that.