If you’ve come this far it probably won’t surprise you when I say that my view of Christmas as we celebrate it today is equivocal. I agree with Junior when he muses in one of his (many) internal dialogues that the soundtrack for the modern celebration is a duet for sleigh bells and cash registers. And I do believe that the unremitting barrage of bright, pricey material objects—merchandise—is, on the one hand, cruel to those who can’t afford it (and to their children) and light years away, spiritually, from the event the holiday is supposed to commemorate.
I’m not conventionally religious, by which I mean I don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to any of the world’s widely held belief systems. I see them, in a way, as beaches, some facing East and some facing West, each bordering an enormous sea from which a great many interesting things wash up. Some of these things I’ve picked up and carried with me for life. Others I’ve given a wide berth. But I’m profoundly grateful to the Christmas story for its impact on Western visual art: nativities, mother and child, halos of gold, hands upraised in blessing. The rapture in the eyes of the ragged, unshaved shepherd in Van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds; Fra Angelico, painting on his knees; the guttering candle and fanning pages in Van Eyck’s Annunciation, blown by the word of God. Some of the most beautiful images I know.
And many of the first serious paintings of women in the Western artistic tradition. Whenever I see a really individualistic painting of the annunciation I wonder what young woman served as the model for Mary and what impact the experience might have had on her. There’s probably a book there, although I’m not the person who could write it.
The writing soundtrack for Fields Where They Lay was all over the map. A reader who works in a bookstore that’s part of a mall in the Great Lakes area somehow stole and sent me a huge mp3 file of Christmas shopping music that she says she hears from mid-November through December 25. I tried, I really tried, but in the end I practically pulled my hair out trying to get my earphones off.
From then on, it was mainly classical, a lot of Mozart and Vivaldi, with some old Solomon Burke (God, he could sing), Arcade Fire, Anderson East, and a lot of the Phil Spector Christmas album, which is blessedly heavy on Darlene Love. Also an Emmylou Harris mix I made, slanted toward her stellar Christmas album, Light of the Stable (from which I deleted “Little Drummer Boy”). But a lot of Emmylou’s music has holiness in it, to my ears, so there was quite a bit of her.
As always, if you want to broaden my musical horizons (or try to adjust my attitude toward the modern Christmas), feel free to contact me at www.timothyhallinan.com.