The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1953-01-23
Just Among Ourselves
PsssIns Comment censidered or IneonsiderAts

We hover now near the exit of the Great Hall
of Jubation where we have been keeping Christ
mas for many joyful weeks Before us down the
steps on the Sundays after Epiphany, stretches
the corridor that leads TO The Hall Of Penance
While the echoes of the Nativity celebration are
still in our ears, let US glance backward for mo-
ment and consider details of the festivities
are about TO leave behind US
This matter Of carols now. What about them!
Certainly, the world has never echoed so loudly
and so long with Christmas carols as in this our
day When the waits went about with tabors or
ducimers OF lutes zithers or whatever instru-
ments we're suited to their use, and sang for the
delight or dudgeon of householders carol was
usually true to its manifesto: il was melodous cry
Of JOY for the Birth of Our Lord
And when the family gathered of an evening
about the harp harpischord, the melodeon
or the piano the Christmas chorus really had in
il the spirit of Christmas All this was before the
inventive genius OF man had furnished the most
modest home with mechanical means of preserving
and repeating their songs,-of repeating and re-
peating and repeating! When records came in, a
good deal Of the worlds happiest and most spon
taneous singing went out
How long think you. will plain man raise his
own poor voice in song if he can turn a crank
him by trained singers? Who will dare continue
the crude business of family singing when he may
have smooth professional performance by chorus
emplattered at 49, As or 78 rpm? CheSerson says
somewhere that men longer dance for Joy; no
they pay money and sit in theatre scat to watch
other people dance for the silly reason that these
other people can dance better As with dancing so
with singing. And so with the singing of Christmas
carols. Never have many carols been sung
never have SO many carols been heard never
have so few people sung them.
The recording of the human voice is doubtless
wonderful thing. And yet there is sense in
which the recording of voice is not so truly
preserving as complete destroying of that voice
man who has heard Caruso sing will always re
member ii. who has heard Caruso record
played over and and over until delirum sets in
will not so much remember the voice as rejoice to
forget the experience. One way to make a great
song great nuisance is TO hear IL too often. And
fayorite record is always heard too often.
II may sound unkind and even slightly irrelig
ious to say that Christmas carols are heard TOO
often. But II is neither ungfacious nor impious to
say so. For il is fact. carol that arouses holy
Joy in the glory of Christmas, will inevitably its
fiftieth consecutive repetition unholy rage
and the uncomfortable desire TO smash something
especially the record that at first aroused the Joy
You can listen 10 man sing song fifty times
do as well, or better or possibly not so well, as
he begins each rendering But with a record there
is no expectation: the thing is fixed and settled;
il is the same, the same the same and intoler-
ably the same, in its mechanical repetition. II IS
the hammer endieSSiy pounding with not the slight
est variation in its stroke II is the drop Of water
ceaselessy falling in the steady drip drip drip that
tears the nerves to ShredS at last
The recorded carols would be splendid things
il the records we're capable of being played but
half dozen times They become wearlsome and
irritating because they can be played, not half
dozen times but half thousand. They would be
pleasing if a person might turn 10 them al Will
and when the mood il on him. They become
hardship when a person has no control of them
at all but in private and in public must hear them
blated brassily for five OF SIX weeks together
Said stad and sober citizen last month: u count
myself Christian and religious man | love Christ
mas / rejoice in all that Christmas means But If /
have 10 listen to the yowline of NOVEL;. NOVEL;
another time | shall scream And am sore afraid
that what shall scream will be neither Christian
nor religious!
And there is such tumble of sense and nonsense
in the singing of caros.-or, more properly speak
ing IN the disk iockeying of carols,that the troub-
led spirit is more troubled still What madness Is
IL that combines the summonlng OF the talthtui
with Frosty the snow man! What mas Wlhler won
derland 10 do with the three kings of the orient?
How have carols of the shepherds and the star and
tho Cave of the Nativity, come to be identified with
vague longings for a White Christmas?
The carols are not only too frequently, and me
chanieally repeated. thes presented in a March
Hare madness of sequence II is as though a
public singer, after soulfully doing Gounods Acc
Maria should suddenly dash into ThereH be Hot
Time N the Old Toten Tonight, The recorded carols
not only iangle the nerves; they laeerate the sense
of propriety
Well we shall hear no more carols now toi
eleven months No. that is not quite true. Christmas
cards will be on sale about July 4th, and the dec
orations will be up in the big stores before October
is out But still we have SIX or seven carolles
months ahead Maybe we can arrange, in this ample
time of anticipation to have our 1853 carols dom
better less repettiously, and in proper order
And again, maybe not