God, I love Christmas! Help!!!

[Jolimont]

Something must be wrong with me because I don't believe in jebus but I am such a sucker for Christmas sacred music!!! I was listening to the Cambridge Singers and this crap just makes me cry it's so beautiful. Why can't we have amazing music for atheists, eh? Where's the Ode to the Big Bang, the opera for Critical Thinking? :Cheeky:

[Joe Bloe]

Monty Python - The Universe Song [from The Meaning of Life]

Whenever life get's you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough.
When people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite enough...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's revolving.
Revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, or so it's reckoned,
'round the sun that is the source of all our power.

Complete lyrics (http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/Meaning_of_life_song.html)

[Illithid]

Of course, the Christians have had a couple thousand years to come up with this stuff. Some of the greatest composers of classical music were Christians, or were sponsered by them, to write masses and such... it is gorgeous music, especially if you don't understand the words.

There's "Imagine", I guess. Most stuff I like doesn't fill the bill for the holidays: Nine Inch Nails wouldn't play well over a shopping center's PA system.

[WhackAGod]

There is nothing wrong with liking works of art. You don't have to believe the religion that inspired it. Very few people believe the Hellenic gods, yet ancient greek art is still considered beautiful. Enjoy it without any guilt!

[Worldtraveller]

Yeah, nuthin at all wrong with appreciating the art form of music, no matter what inspired it.

I am listening to my collection of Trans Siberian Orchestra CDs right now, as well as a CD of Xmas music that my wife, her sister, and I recorded a few years ago or our families.

Although most of my favorite xmas music is the more non-traditional stuff like TSO and a bunch of celtic/gaelic xmas tunes.

Cheers,
Lane

[Alter]

One of my favorite classical tunes of all time is Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". I don't agree with the sentiment, though.

[Viti]

I love Christmas too, including carols. I can listen to Carol of the Bells or Do You Hear What I Hear in various versions all season long.

[Octavia]

I love Christmas too - everything about it. Carols, trees, mince pies, trifle... Especially carols - am going to a carols by candlelight thing tomorrow. Of course, I don't believe in much of the subject matter, but I wouldn't stop singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" because I don't believe in dragons.

There's no point being militant simply to deprive yourself of something that you enjoy.

[Worldtraveller]

If anyone wants a sax solo version of "Have yourself a Merry little xmas" let me know. :D

That's me on sax!

Cheers,
Lane

[jayh]

Funny you should mention thato 3 am just reading an email invite to my office's tree triming (I'm on the road and responding by blackberry). It sounds like fun, I just might do It.

[Cross_]

If anyone wants a sax solo version of "Have yourself a Merry little xmas" let me know.Wish you'd offered that a few days earlier I was looking for background music for an amateur christmas skit video. Now it's the Nutcracker instead..

[aunicornist]

I love christmas too!! In fact just this evening I was singing an excerpt of "we wish you a merry christmas" to my husband!

"I wont go until I get some, I wont go until I get some, I wont go until I get some, so get over here" ...

I love christmas carols, but now that I am a happy little heathen, I no longer feel enormous amounts of guilt for my dorky bouts of unbridled passion for christmas song parodies :devil3:

[Illithid]

If I recall the lyrics correctly, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" may be entirely nonreligious. I remember my speech professor singing it to her class at the end of fall semester one year at TxA&M. And it sounds great, too.

[veniceboy]

I adore xmas and xmas songs, including the religious ones. So what? I also like the Illiad.

[Magnus Armstrong]

I've been learning how to play the theremin, which works best when you have the tune firmly in your mind.

Guess what tunes are in my head right now? O Holy Night, Silent Night, etc.

However, I have managed a passable version of White Christmas!

[Berthold]

Religious art per se should be appreciated by its art value.

As for alternatives, how about "It ain't necessarily so", and quite a few titles from the golden age of pop (just I don't recall them at the moment)?

[Tubby Lardmore]

I've been learning how to play the theremin...

Where do you go to buy one? I think it got famous from the Beach Boys using it on Good Vibrations.

[TransverseWave]

Something must be wrong with me because I don't believe in jebus but I am such a sucker for Christmas sacred music!!! I was listening to the Cambridge Singers and this crap just makes me cry it's so beautiful. Why can't we have amazing music for atheists, eh? Where's the Ode to the Big Bang, the opera for Critical Thinking? :Cheeky:
I tend to regard every work praising the natural world as amazing music for atheists. But whyever shouldn't you appreciate Christian sacred music? I'm fond of traditional Christmas carols, stained glass, Gothic architecture, and Hildegard von Bingen.

[philian]

I have to chime in. My two favs are Carol of the Bells, and The Little Drummer Boy. The irony is that The Little Drummer Boy is as religiously inspired as it is biblically inaccurate. The song places the wise men in the manger, which never actually happenned :)

[RevDahlia]

I have to chime in. My two favs are Carol of the Bells, and The Little Drummer Boy. The irony is that The Little Drummer Boy is as religiously inspired as it is biblically inaccurate. The song places the wise men in the manger, which never actually happenned :)
If you haven't heard Tori Amos' version, you must rectify the situation immediately. It's awesome.

I, too, love Christmas. Love it. I own nine krillion Christmas ornaments and almost as many strands of lights (only about half of which work, but no matter.) I decorate everything in sight. I'm working on a Caribbean fruitcake that I started making on Rosh Hashanah, for fuckssake. I love all the devotional choral music -- the more obscure, the better. I even, truth be told, like the Nativity story a lot; I think it's resonant and beautiful. And I'm a lifelong atheist. Do not be ashamed, o irreligious lovers of Christmas; they stole most of this stuff from the pagans anyway.

Query: does anybody know of a really good version of "I Saw Three Ships"? I need it for... a... Christmas... mix.... CD. That I'm making. To play at work. *running, hiding*

[Julie]

I have never been big into christmas. My kids are very active destrivtive type people...so this is the first time Ive put up a christmas tree in 6 years...so of cource I had to go out and buy a new tree (Fake, Real ones bother my allergies)

And of cource I needed new lights and new ornaments...tree and ornaments were oh $250. Then I broke my Snowbaby so I had to go get a new one...dropped $119 at one store on snowbabies and more ornaments...and they didnt have the snowbaby I was looking for so I went to a different store...and dropped another $119 and they didnt even have Snow babies there.

Oh the bright side my tree is now decorated in old fashioned Glass ornamants that I'll be able to pass on to the kids when they are grown...

But I still need to hit a few more shops to get that snowbaby I need :)

Not to mention the non-stop christmas music that the kids started playing in ohh November.

[Prometevsberg]

Where do you go to buy one? I think it got famous from the Beach Boys using it on Good Vibrations.
the glory of the internet:
http://www.thereminworld.com/news.asp:thumbs:

[Zygote]

For hundreds of years, the church was where the money was - there wasn't much of a living writing choral works for the general public. The church tapped the deep emotional power of music for its own ends.

I heard a Mozart choral piece in a cathedral in Hungary. After a mass in Latin with incense and a regal looking guy in sumptuous robes, the music floated down from above and behind the pews in an a capella harmony that can only be described as heavenly.

My two atheist teenagers are having a blast learning the Carol of the Bells at school. Nothing wrong with enjoying some good tunes.

[Magnus Armstrong]

Where do you go to buy one? I think it got famous from the Beach Boys using it on Good Vibrations.

Even better:

http://moogmusic.com/detail.php?main_product_id=110

This is the one that I have. The Etherwave Standard is much cheaper and very popular. Robert Moog set up his business in Asheville, NC in the late 70s, so now it's home-grown!

(btw, the Beach Boys actually used a ribbon-controlled instrument similar in sound to the theremin, called a Tannerin, partly because is was easier for them to play)

[NZSkep]

Yeah, nuthin at all wrong with appreciating the art form of music, no matter what inspired it.

I am listening to my collection of Trans Siberian Orchestra CDs right now, as well as a CD of Xmas music that my wife, her sister, and I recorded a few years ago or our families.

Although most of my favorite xmas music is the more non-traditional stuff like TSO and a bunch of celtic/gaelic xmas tunes.

Cheers,
Lane

wizards in winter rocks - that was them wasn't it? The same piece of usic that guy with the house used.

[starling]

As for alternatives, how about "It ain't necessarily so", and quite a few titles from the golden age of pop (just I don't recall them at the moment)?

It aint necessarily so
It aint necessarily so
The things that youre liable
To read in the bible
It aint necessarily so

Great song! The person singing was playing a slave no less. In your face, gospel!

[Zygote]

I just got back from a Sing-Along-Messiah. Nothing compares to singing harmonies in the midst of several hundred people.

When I actually pay attention to the words, I wonder how anyone could have ever swallowed that stuff hook line and sinker. But it doesn't stop the harmonies from being beautiful.

[Jolimont]

I just got back from a Sing-Along-Messiah. Nothing compares to singing harmonies in the midst of several hundred people.

When I actually pay attention to the words, I wonder how anyone could have ever swallowed that stuff hook line and sinker. But it doesn't stop the harmonies from being beautiful.
Thanks for your responses everyone, maybe I'm not so strange after all! ;)
I go to sing along Messiah too, I bought the score so I could sing alto. But I think John Rutter is the MAN for the season. Come to think of it, was he a believer? Maybe not. Wouldn't be so unusual actually.

[jackrabbit]

One of my favorite classical tunes of all time is Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". I don't agree with the sentiment, though.

Fortunately, much of the Bach, Beethoven, etc. is totally instrumental, so if you don't pay attention to the title, you can easily forget it's religious in nature. And if there are words, but they are in German or another language, same thing.

[Clivedurdle]

What exactly is this - oh dear I shouldn't really enjoy that - stuff about?

Guilt and sin are xian things aren't they? Why do atheists have to be puritans?