Welcome to Tuesday and another Christmasy edition of Tuesday's Musical Notes, the blog where Christmas music meets contemplatable musings all tied up in pretty paper, pretty ribbons of blue...or red or well, you pick your paper...
Since its inception, Tuesday's Musical Notes has loved exploring the season of Christmas and the music that accompanies it. Go check out the December archives on the left to see if your favorite Christmas melody has been given "The Notes" treatment! Also, we rarely solicit comments, but if you have a thought or conversation you'd like to begin, our comment section is available at the bottom of the blog, we'd love to hear from you anytime!!!
Many years there is at least 1 album or artist that becomes the favorite Christmas album for the holidays. Retailers struggle during the lead up to Christmas week, to keep up with the demand for that particular album. Who will it be this year? Dolly? Mariah? Pentatonix, Carrie. Leslie Odom Jr? Of course, with streaming capabilities in many markets, the demand for physical units becomes less of a problem this year...sigh, remember the days when you paid for something that you could actually hold in your hands?...but I digress.
Sometime in October, the deluge of Christmas music begins to pour out into the marketplace. Singles and full-length albums of Christmas standards, and new music wishing to become a standard, are released to the public in the hopes of having 4th Quarter success. (Somewhere in midst of all the "Jingle Bells" and Red-Nosed Reindeers we lost the musical Message of Christmas, but more on that at a later date).
With this myriad of seasonal songs, a few will tend to fall through the cracks and not get noticed (Didn't know about Leslie Odom Jr's (simply titled The Christmas Album) until this week!!!). While these "second 10 or 20" offerings for the season are good albums and certainly deserve a listen, sometimes the timing or the marketing just doesn't quite live up to some of their compatriot's seasonal selections and they quickly fall into next year's Christmas cutout bin. Such was the case for Sir Richard Starkey's Christmas album from 1999.
Who you may be asking is Sir Richard Starkey? You might know him better by his Beatle name...Ringo Starr.
Even though it received strong reviews, I Wanna Be Santa Claus did not light up the Christmas music world. (It would be swallowed up in the sales phenomenon that was Kenny G's Faith album (Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Auld Lang Syne" (Kenny G Millineum Mix))).
Ringo's Christmas album was a 50/50 split of perennial standards and original songs and featured several celebrity guest artists (as so many of Ringo's albums do) including ELO's, Jeff Lynne, Aerosmith's Joe Perry, and former Eagles band member Timothy B. Schmit.
I Wanna Be Santa Claus is the only full-length, solo Christmas project released by any member of the Beatles. As a group, they produced the fan club songs we referenced last week (Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)" (The Beatles)). Paul McCartney, (Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Wonderful Christmastime" (Paul McCartney)), John Lennon, and George Harrison (Tuesday's Musical Notes - "The Light that has Lighted the World" (George Harrison), Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Got My Mind Set on You" (George Harrison)) reserved their seasonal celebrations to Christmas singles. Ringo's Christmas album sets him apart from his Fab Four brethren even though the album never charted and sales were low despite receiving good reviews from critics.
Ringo's motivation for being Santa Claus is so he can give all of the toys away, ride in the sleigh, and make every dream come true. That sounds pretty close to the job description with which Santa has been labeled through the years. One qualifier that Ringo however never places on his being Santa is the judgment of the behavior of folks over the course of the year. The "naughty and nice" list is nonexistent in Ringo's Christmas economy.
But Santa does have his list and he checks it twice, just to find out who's naughty and nice, as the song goes. How does Santa come to the determination of who is "naughty" or "nice"? For that matter, how do any of us measure what is good, bad, naughty, nice?
Rest assured friend, there is a benchmark, a guide to what is good and bad in our world. It comes from the One who created the world, it's called the Bible. All of the rules, the laws, the commands in the Bible are given for us to have a moral, ethical, and spiritual code by which to live and interact with others that make up the only race, the human race (everything else is culture and melatonin).
For example, The Book of Leviticus - New American Standard Bible/The Amplified Bible/King James Version of the Bible parallel is the initial set of laws given to the children of Israel as they began their new nation. Leviticus gets into the specifics that were laid out by the ten commandments given to the Israelites in the latter part of Exodus. God gave them these instructions to provide the boundaries which they would need to establish their government and to keep them as the "peculiar" people He desired them to be. Although these laws were given to a people of ancient history (3000-4000 years ago) many of the rules of Leviticus still apply and have been used in establishing our own legal system.
In reading Leviticus, you quickly see the specific nature of the laws that were given. Remember the context in that this 3rd book of the Bible was given to a group of folks who had been slaves their entire lives. The only rules they had previously were given to them by their Egyptian taskmasters. Now they were free and to avoid another "Golden Calf" moment in the life of their nation, God provided rules for them.
When Jesus came, He fulfilled all of the prophecies of the Old Testament. When Jesus came, He fulfilled the law. This means that Jesus not only satisfied the requirements for prophecy, but He came to show what the true meaning of love is by giving His life as a satisfaction for the price of our sin, our wrong-doing. The Letter to the Roman church, chapter 6 - NASB/AMP/KJV He also drilled down all of the laws from the Old Testament (which men had perverted) into 2: Love God and Love everybody else. Even though some of the laws given in Leviticus seem archaic and not applicable to us, they provide us with tangible ways of showing the love that Jesus will speak of in the Gospels The Gospel of Jesus written by the Tax Collector - Matthew, Chapter 22, verses 34-40 NASB/AMP/KJV., The Gospel of Jesus written by Mark, chapter 12, verses 28-34 NASB/AMP/KJV.
The laws of Leviticus and in the remainder of the Bible are for our individual use. They aren't given for us to serve as Santa Claus be determining who is bad or good, nor are they intended for us to interpret for other folks, mete out on other folks, or to use to judge other folks. Holy Spirit uses these laws to convict US individually of the sin that so easily besets US. Not as a tool for us to convict others. The Letter to Hebrew Christians, chapter 12, verses 1-3 NASB, AMP, KJV Our challenge this Christmas season is to resist the desire to wanna be Santa Claus determining who goes on the "naughty or nice" lists and love as Jesus commanded in Matthew and Mark.
Holy Spirit's job is to convict. He doesn't need our help in that role. As believers, our job is to tell the Gospel and make disciples by engaging, encouraging, and edifying, as well as coming through for everyone as we exist in one another's lives every day, bringing Christmas cheer.
"It's a waltz, it's a waltz and I'm happy!!!"
'Til Tuesday,
Serving HIM by serving You,
randy
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