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Technology ArticleGet in the Holiday Spirit with Christmas Music Christmas music or Christmas songs is a genre which is normally performed during the time period leading up to, and sometimes shortly past, Christmas. Christmas songs frequently are the focus of holiday themes directly taken from Christmas, but occasionally they have no content addressing the holiday, and instead focus on wintry themes. These songs recognizably fall into several different groupings, depending on both the time and melody of the songs. Songs which are traditional, even some without a specific religious context, are often called Christmas carols. Some songs of more recent vintage, often introduced in films, are specifically about Christmas, but are typically not overtly religious and therefore do not qualify as Christmas carols. The archetypal example is 1942’s “White Christmas”, although many other holiday songs have become perennial favourites, such as Gene Autry’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. A significant subset of the secular songs are regarded as “Christmas” songs due to the time of year that they are most often sung, despite never mentioning anything about Christmas. These songs include traditional favourites such as “Winter Wonderland” and “Sleigh Ride” (whose standard lyrics mention not a holiday party but a birthday party). These songs fall into the generic “winter” classification, as they carry no Christmas connotation at all. However, it could be argued that it would be impossible to popularize a winter-themed song, especially in the United States, without its being regarded as a “Christmas” song. In fact, winter-themed songs are generally not played on the radio in the U.S. during the larger part of the winter after the Christmas season has ended. However, some songs, such as Winter Wonderland and Let it Snow, receive some limited radio airplay on some stations particularly after a significant snow event. Christmas music is a particularly popular format among radio stations as a "stunt format," used as a buffer for the time period (usually a few days) between when the previous format is cancelled and the new format is launched. In addition to Christmas and winter-themed songs, songs for other holidays celebrated during this time period may be heard during the Christmas season. Such holidays include Hanukkah, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and (somewhat more rarely) Kwanzaa. Another subset of the popular Christmas songs, apart from the more sincere ones, are the many parodies or twists on existing songs, which are usually classified as "Novelty songs". They range from the cuteness of "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", by Alvin and the Chipmunks, to the Cold War gallows humor of "Christmas at Ground Zero" and the morbid humor of "The Night Santa Went Crazy", both by "Weird Al" Yankovic. Some songs have little relationship to Christmas, but are hyped up over the period. Each year in the United Kingdom record companies compete for the Christmas number one single spot, usually, but not always, with a Christmas-related song. This is parodied in the film Love Actually, whereby an artist records a cover version of a song and adds a Christmas twist to it, all the time admitting that it is "rubbish". Cliff Richard is famed for his many attempts, with some success, to get the Christmas number-one single. To find great deals on christmas music type in Christmas music into the search box to find all the deals on christmas music please visit onsavings.com Wikipedia Disclaimer Above information is from wikipedia and is freely distributed under the GNU license Also See: All Articles |