The Cutting Edge

Holiday Music Again...and Again...and Again...and...

Dashing through the…

I’m dreaming of a white…

Here comes….

Sleigh bells ring….

Every year, it is the same songs, maybe with one or two new ones thrown in. But, generally, we sing the same Christmas carols year after year. My guess is that you know a half-dozen, or more, of those songs by heart, word for word. We learned them as children, and here we are, mature adults, singing that very same music with gusto as if it were brand new.

With nothing else to think about: no, ahem, political strife, no economic worries, no world armageddons, I wondered why? What is it about holiday music that brings us repeatedly back to the same celebratory strains about bells jingling, the jolly old elf, hanging mistletoe, and glistening snow? Searching for an answer, I went to a responsible, reputable, trustworthy source on which every conscientious, serious, credible writer should rely. The internet. More specifically, Artificial Intelligence.

I asked AI, “Why do songs that are repeated every Christmas holiday season generate such emotion?” Within seconds, AI popped up with a long treatise exploring my query. But the bottom line, according to this allegedly all knowing, all seeing algorithm: “The songs don’t change, but we do. The emotion comes from that quiet reckoning.”

Whoa! There is science behind “oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh, hey?” Apparently so. According to AI, it all really does start in childhood, when we first hear about white Christmases, “just like the ones I used to know,” although we may have never heard about such a thing before then. But our brains are really good at binding sound to emotion, and we carry those feelings throughout our lives.

Grab a cup of eggnog. AI get very technical at this point. “In neuroscience terms, repetition tied to emotion strengthens connections between the auditory cortex, hippocampus (memory) and amygdala (emotion.).” And here I thought these songs were just fun to sing.

Christmas music, AI continues, is tightly bound to a specific time of year. Well, duh. We don’t sing Silent Night on the 4th of July. But hearing those carols when we do at the same time every year “acts like opening a sealed room in memory.” Those memories lead to a wide range of recollections: warm, or perhaps painful, family dynamics - childhood expectations - absence of people who are gone - a sense of “how things used to be.” There is a lot of that last one going around, lately, having zero to do with Christmas.

Besides memories, there are rituals. AI says, rather haughtily in my opinion, that we humans are tied to ritual; we are deeply comforted-and unsettled-by it. Holiday songs are part of a ritual cycle. We expect them and that expectation provides comfort from familiarity and predictability. The comfort is expressed in thoughts of home, peace, forgiveness, reunion and even longing. That’s probably one reason why “Please Come Home for Christmas,” written in 1960 by blues singer and pianist Charles Brown, is still so popular today. “Bells will ringin’ the sad, sad news…”

It can be sad if loved ones are not around on the holidays. Brown’s lyrics lay that in simple, sincere language. AI says that is a common quality in holiday music that modern music often avoids. That sincerity, the emotionless algorithm states, slips past adult defenses. It hits us right where we feel it most - in our hearts.

Another reason why we hear Christmas carols all the time is because they are inescapable! Go into a department store, holiday music is background sound. Turn on a radio, Christmas music in between all the talk shows. Restaurants, carols with your coffee. Love them or hate them, ubiquitous holiday tunes are part of a collective which amplifies their impact.

In conclusion, AI posits that Christmas songs feel powerful because they are annual emotional checkpoints. They replay not just music, but earlier versions of ourselves - and force us to listen from where we are now.

Christmas music endures. And so does this: Merry Christmas, Everyone, from The Cutting Edge!