David Mills writes in about an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Christmas song that he’s been listening to since the 70’s. He goes on to talk in depth about the song.
It’s the season to be Cranky About Christmas, a.k.a. Advent. It’s the season people let you be disgruntled and curmudgeonly, if you complain about the way our commercialized culture exploits the Savior’s birth. Even eternally cheerful people appreciate others criticizing the way our culture secularizes and sentimentalizes the turning point in human history, and for such tawdry ends.
But even the curmudgeon has his bright spots. I have a soft spot in my heart, created in my earnest secularish teenage years, for the Christmas song, “I Believe in Father Christmas.” A 1975 hit by the “prog rock” group Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it was written and sung by Greg Lake, who died last week. It’s serious, which is a big point in its favor, especially when our culture’s religiously-neutral Christmas is so mindless and trivial. But it also vacates the hope it seeks, which is not.
Mills, although his piece was about one song in particular, brought to mind the premature appearance of Christmas music. Each year it seems like Christmas music fills the radio waves earlier, this year we heard Jingle bells in a store a couple weeks before Thanksgiving! With this in mind we would like to ask.
