Christmas music from the land of castles

Celtic Christmas; various Windham Hill artists

Venice, Italy, makes me wish I were Italian. Salzburg, Austria, makes me wish I were Austrian. Barcelona, Spain, makes me wish I were Spanish, Stockholm, Swedish, and Istanbul, Turkish. And Celtic music makes me wish I were Celtish.

I have a group of CD’s on my iPod that I accumulated over the course of about five years. Windham Hill has put together a series of CD samplers each of which they title Celtic Christmas, and which they numbered as they released them. There doesn’t seem to be any strict definition of Celtic music to which the producers adhere. And there doesn’t seem to be any overarching message. In fact, some of them aren’t Christmas songs, even in the loosest terms. But stylistically, I enjoy the musical mosaic that they present.

Very seldom on these albums do the artists perform a Christmas song that you and I would recognize as such. And on this first of these CD’s, there isn’t one at all. They certainly have names evocative of Christmas: “Snow On High Ground”, “Third Carol For Christmas Day”, “Snow” and “On A Cold Winter’s Day”. Since some of these songs have no lyrics, I have to trust the composer/performer that the music put forth accurately depicts what the title declares.

The general repertoire of Christmas songs, carols and hymns is much more vast than the average celebrator of Christmas realizes. But the narrow band of twenty to twenty-five songs that get played and sung the most, sadly, become so tiresome at the end of a Christmas season that gets longer and longer with each passing year.

Here is a group of songs, only a few which are repeated over the course of seven CD’s or so, that one would be hard pressed to play, or even desire to play, in a way that differs from the versions pressed onto these CDs. And although I like the variety, the level of musicianship, the Celtic instrumentation and the general organic nature of this type of music, I think I appreciate its uniqueness the most, with the yellow police line tape surrounding this body of musical wealth declaring, “Do not touch, do not copy, do not duplicate. This is our Christmas music. It is best enjoyed from a few steps back where little hands can’t touch.”

By the way, Italians, Austrians, Spaniards, Swedes, Turks and Celts notwithstanding, the fjords and lefse make me proud to be Norwegian, Copenhagen and ebelskiver make me proud to be Danish, and rounded O’s and green Jell-o with peas, lettuce and sour cream make me proud to be South Dakotan.

Credits: To musicians of national music all over the world, for being ambassadors of your people by making beautiful representation of your and their culture, landscape and traditions through poetry and music, bringing even more richness to a world already opulent in variety and splendor. Thank you.