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Secular Christmas Music

Brian-M

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Brian-M
Joined
Jul 22, 2008
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Now that the silly season is with us once again and people all around the world prepare to celebrate the various traditional midwinter festivals of the Northern Hemisphere, most notably Christmas, I was thinking that we could put together a playlist of songs that celebrate the season without celebrating religion.

(For the sake of sanity, we'll also omit the numerous children's songs about portly polar gift-givers, aerobatic ruminants with ludicrously luminous noses, magically animated snow-golems, ect.)

To start things off, I'll ignore the obvious choice that I've heard so many times on the radio over the years that I'm sick of it, and I'll suggest "White Wine in The Sun" by Tim Minchin instead...

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If anyone's confused about why a Christmas song should have "in The Sun" as part of the title and lyrics, Tim Minchin is Australian, and over here Christmas is in the middle of the summer. It's not unusual for people down here to celebrate Christmas with immediate family in the morning, and then go off for an extended family gathering in the afternoon, often spending part of the day lounging around outside having a picnic or barbeque, with adults drinking cold beer or wine while the children play with their new toys.

If you're interested in Christmas music in general, there's already a thread for them from last year: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=250016&highlight=christmas

ETA: I've put this in the Religion and Philosophy sub-forum because that's where the other Christmas music thread was. But I'm not entirely sure a thread about non-religious Christmas songs belongs there. Maybe social issues and current events?
 
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I've always really loved White Wine in the Sun.

I think it serves as a great answer to some criticisms of atheism/ defenses of theism that try to say we lose those family/community rituals by abandoning belief in gods or embrace of religion.

It's also a nice message for atheists that the baby doesn't need to be thrown out with the bathwater and there's no need to distance ourselves from anything just because it has religious origins.
 
Some more classics:
Wizzard, I Wish it could be Christmas Every Day


Springsteen, Santa Claus is Coming to Town Merry Christmas, Baby


and, of course, Kirsty MacColl with the Pogues, Fairy Tale of New York


ETA:
Springsteen, Santa Claus is Coming to Town
 
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zooterkin said:
and, of course, Kirsty MacColl with the Pogues, Fairy Tale of New York
Click to expand...

I honestly can't believe it took until post 6 for the best Christmas song ever to be featured.

Not 100% religion free, as it does passingly contain the lyric "holy night", but I think it deserves a mention. Last year Radio 1's Scott Mills decided that he wanted to make the perfect Christmas single, and so enlisted the help of everybody Christmassy he could think of in order to distil down to its essence what made the perfect Christmas single. In other words, this is as big a collection of clichés as it's possible to have. However, it actually works out as a pretty catchy song. Wisely, they left most of the singing to Frisky And Mannish.

It's also got an interesting and unique message. Seeing as they wanted to create the perfect Christmas single, they decided to call it "The Perfect Christmas Single". So the song is being sung to a friend who has recently ended a relationship, and the message of the song is that you don't need to be in a relationship to be valued and have a good time, even at Christmas. The person being sung to is the perfect Christmas single. And you have to love the line "you're Frankensensational", don't you?

Also sadly notable for how short Beccy's rap is, as this is shortly after she was diagnosed with MS, which left her rarely able to rap any more. And the world needs more female rappers with West Country accents:

 
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Cavemonster said:
I've always really loved White Wine in the Sun.

I think it serves as a great answer to some criticisms of atheism/ defenses of theism that try to say we lose those family/community rituals by abandoning belief in gods or embrace of religion.

It's also a nice message for atheists that the baby doesn't need to be thrown out with the bathwater and there's no need to distance ourselves from anything just because it has religious origins.
Click to expand...

Yep.

I'm dreaming of a white wine Christmas...
 
To me, any song I didn't hear around Christmas as a kid doesn't feel Christmasy, so I'm limited to traditional carols (in which I'm including anything from before I was born, so don't bother arguing that Mel Tormé isn't traditional just because he's not Renaissance or even Medieval), and the songs on a particular Christmas album by the Oak Ridge Boys (a gospel group which seemed to be my parents' favorite source of music in the world). So I have to point out traditional/old ones that are secular:
everything from The Nutcracker
Silver Bells
Jingle Bells
The Christmas Song ("Merry Christmas To You")
O Christmas Tree
Sleigh Ride
Carol Of The Bells
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland

Also, even the religious ones become non-religious if you play instrumental versions of them, which I've gone out of my way to collect...
 
Pure Instrumental:





But really, anything from that show, even the religious ones, are pretty darn good.
 
zooterkin said:
Some more classics:
Wizzard, I Wish it could be Christmas Every Day


Springsteen, Santa Claus is Coming to Town Merry Christmas, Baby


and, of course, Kirsty MacColl with the Pogues, Fairy Tale of New York


ETA:
Springsteen, Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Click to expand...

I mentioned in the "Best Covers" thread that the Crystals' version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town from the Spector Christmas Album deserved "best cover" status because the sax and the chorus were taken for many other later versions, including, most notably, Springsteen's.




But me? I like me some country secular holiday music. Reba McEntire and good ol' boy, Andrea Bocelli ( :jaw-dropp )


Frankly, I prefer Reba's torch and twang to Andrea's perfect bell tones. But this needs to be filed under "Bad idea, producers!"
 
Foolmewunz said:
I mentioned in the "Best Covers" thread that the Crystals' version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town from the Spector Christmas Album deserved "best cover" status because the sax and the chorus were taken for many other later versions, including, most notably, Springsteen's.

Click to expand...
I nearly mentioned the Spector album; somewhere I have the vinyl album, and I think I transferred it to CD a few years ago.
 
zooterkin said:
I nearly mentioned the Spector album; somewhere I have the vinyl album, and I think I transferred it to CD a few years ago.
Click to expand...

My customers may be coming after me with cricket bats this year. Every time (only about three that I can recall) that I ever worked in a retail or merchandising venue at Christmas, I played that album until I swear you could hear Bobby Sox and the Blue Jeans on side two when playing side one. The needle had cut through to the flip side! Now I have it on CD so it can't wear out.

Oh, and it needs to be BLASTED from the speakers, preferably big honking speakers and an amp that, "..... goes to 11!" He didn't call it "the wall of sound" to be ironic.
 
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