Something happened this month that remined me of this post published on the fortieth anniversary of the first lunar landing.
I noted at the beginning of the piece that the 1960s was a decade filled with life defining moments as far as national and world events were concerned.
Today the news outlets call it "breaking news", but in the competitive business of reporting the news 24/7 these days, "breaking news" can refer to anything from an assassination attempt to the proverbial cat stuck up a tree.
Not so in the sixties when these words: "We interrupt this program to bring you a news bulletin..." meant serious business, often the preamble to what would become one of those life-defining moments. And the news that followed those ominous words, was usually bad.
Except once.
I still get chills whenever I think of Walter Cronkite's reaction the moment when from almost three hundred thousand miles away, the voice of Neil Armstrong came through loud and clear: "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."
Talk about a life defining moment. I feel privileged to have been around to experience it, old enough to appreciate it, but not old enough to be cynical about it.
This month's re-opening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris after a 2019 fire nearly destroyed the 900 year old treasure, was another of those life defining moments for me.
You can read why in this post, written shortly after that devastating fire.
In addition to being one of only a handful of pieces of good news in a very challenging year, I've found other parallels between the restoration of the cathedral and the moon landing.
The most profound similarity is that both accomplishments are sterling examples of triumphs of the human spirit.
Today I'm too old to be cynical about it, but not nearly old enough to not be able to fully appreciate it.
I imagine many of the folks who sat on the Rice University football field one hot Houston September afternoon in 1962 listening to President Kennedy proclaim his intention to successfully send astronauts to the moon (and back!) by the end of the decade, must have thought he was crazy.
Maybe it was the heat.
Granted we had already sent astronauts into space four times, but the difference between the Mercury missions of the time which orbited the earth, and the Apollo missions which would land men on the moon, is a little like the difference between driving in Chicago rush hour traffic, (no small accomplishment) and climbing Mount Everest.
In his speech which you can read here, Kennedy mentioned that the "missile" required to send a spacecraft out of the earth's orbit and on to the moon, would need to be as tall as the football field they were sitting upon was long. And it would need to be constructed out of metal alloys that had not yet been invented.
Obviously, those were only two of the hurdles necessary to accomplish Kennedy's goal.
Given the timeline, this must have seemed an impossible task to anyone paying attention.
No doubt that was the response of many who heard on April 15, 2019, the words of French president Emmanuel Macron who proclaimed as he was standing before Our Lady of Paris while it was still ablaze, that the cathedral would be rebuilt, and would reopen in five years.
It turned out that with five months to spare, the crew of Apollo 11, backed by tens of thousands of dedicated individuals, maybe more, carried out Kennedy's goal.
And here, in photographs ripped off the internet, is how the cathedral looked inside and out earlier this month, just over five years after the fire, thanks to perhaps the same number of dedicated individuals:
If you've ever been there, it doesn't look exactly as it did before, does it? Gone is the austere look of centuries' worth of grime and soot, it's now bright and shiny, almost good as new. So much so it's actually a little jarring. To get an idea of the transformation, the sculpture at the lower right interior shot above is "The Virgin of Paris" a work from the 14th Century. You can compare it to my photograph of it made in 2010, seen in the post linked to above.
The restoration will still take several more years, but just like when it was first built back in the Middle Ages, the cathedral will be open during the construction.
Just like the moon missions, there were detractors.
Aren't there always?
Obviously, a good chunk of money went into the restoration, money which some believe, like the moon missions, would have been better spent elsewhere. I dealt with that subject in both my post about the moon landing and the one on Notre Dame, so I won't go into it here.
Suffice it to say, I disagree.
All I'll add to that is this: if monumental treasures such as Notre Dame, the Pantheon in Rome, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Taj Mahal are not worth saving, then quite frankly, nothing is. Yes, these were all buildings built to serve a particular religion, but because of their beauty, their historical significance, and their status as indelible symbols of the place in which they reside, they have all transcended their original function and today belong not to any one country or religion, but to the whole world. The loss of any of these irreplicable works of art, and others that I don't have the space to list, is a loss for the whole of humanity, even for people never fortunate enough to step inside of them.
Finally, I know there are some who would say the herculean task of restoring Notre Dame in little more than a blink of the eye, is nothing short of a miracle.
Again, I beg to differ. While I did toy with the notion (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) that given the timing of the fire, perhaps some superhuman force (you'll have to read the post to see which one), was at least partly responsible for the catastrophe, its rebirth, like the moon mission, is entirely a human effort. From the Paris Fire Department whose quick thinking and flat-out heroism prevented irreparable damage, to the fundraisers and those who contributed money to rebuild the cathedral, to the architects, engineers and artisans who employed in their work techniques many thought had been lost for centuries, to the construction workers, laborers and the folks who fed them, and everyone I'm leaving out who made the plans a reality, to President Macron who set it all in motion, and to the people of France who demanded the cathedral be rebuilt exactly as it was meant to be, all their efforts are a lasting testimony to the fact that when a critical mass of human beings work together for a common goal, almost anything is possible.
I think that's a splendid thought we all should take into 2025.
Well if you can't beat 'em, join 'em as I say. Sure, things didn't turn out as I had hoped this November and come January 20, our country will turn back the clock and return to a time that about 50 percent of the electorate hoped and prayed was gone for good.
So be it. I've made an early new year's resolution to stop caring. Of course, like all resolutions, don't hold me to that. In that vein I decided to wean myself from my former daily regimen of reading, watching, listening and talking about politics. Instead of reading for example the New York Times, The Atlantic, and my other once go-to sources of information about the world outside my door, I've only been reading about sports. I've also given up the habit of automatically tuning in to the local NPR affiliate on the radio, instead I have my dial set to a station that plays nothing but Christmas music 24/7. I've also given up discussing politics on social media and have turned my attention there solely to watching cat videos. And instead of watching news and political commentary on TV, I've turned to watching nothing but Italian soap operas.
The problem is that never before in my life do I remember a bleaker time for Chicago sports teams. So listening to endless stories about the futility of the prospects for all the hometown teams I've rooted for my entire life, does little to alleviate my depression of the thought of...
Well, you know.
While I still love Christmas, for reasons I care not go into, the holiday has lost much of its sparkle for me. Consequently, the din of sleighbells, ho ho hoing and perfunctory cheer tends to induce more melancholia than merriment these days.
And subjecting myself to hours of cat videos makes me seriously question what I'm doing with my life.
All I can say is this: thank God for streaming TV and Italian soap operas.
Anyway, in the midst of decking the halls with mistletoe while rockin' around the Christmas tree, I did sneak in an NPR break. And on what subject were they reporting? Christmas music of course.
The story reminded me of a Christmas long ago and a conversation my brother-in-law and I had with our very Catholic father-in-law. As was their tradition, our wives' parents had non-stop Christmas music playing on the radio. I think it was just to pull his chain more than anything else, but both my brother-in-law and I brought up the fact that most of the Christmas music we were hearing that day was written by Jewish composers.
Our in-laws, whose annual Christmas decorations consisted of a wreath on the front door and sign on the window that read, "Put Christ back in Christmas", were incredulous.
But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. For starters, the percentage of Christmas music written by Jewish composers closely reflects the percentage of Jewish composers of popular music.
As the popular music industry is above all. a business, success means having your songs played a lot, which naturally translates to sales (a difficult subject these days in the music industry) and everything that entails. Now think of all the pop songs that actually make money compared to the total number of songs that are written and recorded in a given year. I have no idea what that number is, but it has to be extremely small. And when a song does become a hit, meaning one of the most listened to songs of a particular moment, that moment is the window of opportunity to make serious money. And that window opening, unless the song becomes a major hit, is fairly short lived.
Now imagine writing and recording a hit Christmas song. If it catches on with the public, not only is there a window of opportunity to make beaucoup bucks soon after the song is released, but also during every subsequent holiday season.
But I never realized HOW lucrative Christmas music can be. The NPR piece pointed out that at this writing, the top five songs on the Billboard hot 100 (the industry standard for determining the most popular songs of a given week), are all Charismas songs, some of them recorded over 60 years ago.
I don't have anything to back this up, but I imagine Paul McCartney has made more money on his insipid (to my ears) Wonderful Christmastime, than he has on Hey Jude. According to this article about the public's enduring ambivalence to his holiday song, McCartney makes between 400 and 600K per annum for all the times WC gets played between October 31st and December 24th in all the Walmarts, Shopcos, and Piggly Wigglies across this great land of ours, and their equivalents around the world.
But that number pales in comparison the reported 2.5 million dollar royalty check Mariah Carey gets every year for what has become the most popular Christmas tune of all for the umpteenth year, All I Want for Christmas is You.
And it seems that the really successful Christmas tunes if anything, gain traction over the years, so the window of opportunity for them to make scads of money only becomes wider every year. Who knows what Mariah and Macca (by then in his nineties) will be making on those songs in ten years!
So the moral is, if you want to be a pop songwriter, try your hand at writing Christmas tunes. Cha ching, you just never know.
The other not surprising in the least thing about non-Christians writing popular Christmas music is that the vast majority of it is not religious at all, and probably a majority of the non-religious stuff is not even about the holiday. Much of it centers around winter, and all the fun things you can do in the snow such as riding in a one-horse open sleigh. Or if that doesn't float your boat and you find the weather outside frightful, you can stay inside where it's warm and delightful, and go wherever your imagination desires, while resigning yourself just to let it snow. One wonderful, racy and to today's ears somewhat controversial song is the 1944 Frank Loesser diddy Baby I'ts Cold Outside, which doesn't even leave to the imagination what you can do inside.
One of my favorite pop music Christmas songs that really is about Christmas is the 1943 classic, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, written for the film Meet Me in St. Louis by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine. It's about the very real pain of celebrating the season during a time of suffering and loss, made especially poignant as the song was written and originally released during the middle of World War II. Of course, that sentiment runs contrary to all the feelings we're supposed to feel this time of year, so the song's lyrics were altered several times over the years to make it "less depressing." Today it remains one of the most popular Christmas songs that you'll hear played incessantly along with Holly Jolly Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,Jingle Bell Rock, and the rest at your local Target.
Heck I'm going there now, oh boy!
Which brings up one final thought.
The web is filled with articles about surveys of people's favorite and least favorite Christmas songs. Should anyone be surprised that the same songs are on both lists?
While I wouldn't put it on my list of least favorite Christmas songs, by the third or fourth time I've heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas played on the same shopping trip in the same store, I wouldn't mind never hearing it ever again. That goes for a lot of songs that at one time I really loved.
You can guess how I feel about the Christmas songs I've never loved in the first place.
So what do folks like me who love Christmas, just not the same 20 songs played again and again every holiday, listen to by choice?
Sometimes songs are popular for a reason and finding good alternatives can be a little challenging.
One way is to match artists with material you wouldn't automatically associate them with.
When you think of Christmas, the last person you might come up with is Screamin' Jay (I Put a Spell on You) Hawkins. Halloween yes, Christmas no. In preparation for this post, I discovered with great joy and expectation that he does indeed have a Christmas song.
Unfortunately it really sucks.
I listened to the whole thing expecting a payoff at the end, but it never came. Screamin' Jay really should have stuck to Halloween.
The cool cats go for kitsch and what could be better than the Queen of Kitsch herself, Marlene Dietrich? Here she is, singing Little Drummer Boy, in German no less.
Not bad but a little maudlin in my book. Like Sreamin' Jay's Christmas song, perhaps the idea of it is better than the song itself.
But five years ago I found it, my perfect Christmas song. It's a song we all know, sung by two wonderful artists who while not being as far-removed from the idea of Christmas as say Screamin' Jay, or even Marlene, nonetheless are a little out of their element here.
That's why it works so bloody well.
And it truly captures the spirit of joy of the season as well as any song I can think of, heck I wouldn't even mind hearing it a thousand times a year.
The best part is that I will never have to. Here's Leon Redbone and Dr. John, together singing Frosty the Snowman:
The video isn't so bad either.
Anyway, Christmas the secular holiday that is, will be over in a couple of days and along with it all the popular holiday music. Then the real Feast of the Twelve days of Christmas will take place and with that, the sacred Christmas music which in my book never grows old, will continue.
Then will come January 20 and with that who knows, Armageddon perhaps?
Let's hope not.
Communque, avremo ancora la televisione italiana, e non vedo l'ora.
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