Songs I Have to Hear Every Year

Confession:  I started this blog back in January of this year and have been looking forward to writing about my favorite Christmas music since then.  

At the time I was under the impression that I absolutely loved most Christmas music and looked forward to sharing some of it with my faithful readers (all five of them).

But I realized something this year.  I don't love much Christmas music at all.  In fact, I have narrowed it down to a few albums and songs that I find myself listening to repeatedly.  So when I was thinking about what my favorite Christmas songs are, it was a much easier job than I thought it would be.  I just thought about the songs I HAVE to hear each year, and the list ended up being about 25 songs.  Appropriate - I know.

So here they are - from least to greatest.  Enjoy them - discover them - play them again and again.  But most of all have a Merry Christmas.  Because that is what I am about to be doin' right now.

25. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Relient K

24. Joseph's Lullaby - Mercy Me

23. I Saw Three Ships - Robert Shaw

22. Drummer Boy - Mercy Me

21. White Christmas Makes Me Blue - Randy Travis

20. Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More - Relient K

19. Ludacrismas - Ludacris

18. Meet Me Under the Mistletoe - Randy Travis

17. Santa Claus is Thumbin' to Town - Relient K

16. The Night Before Christmas - Amy Grant

15. Christmas in Killarney - Bing Crosby

14. We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Relient K

13. Here Comes Santa Claus - The Mills Brothers

12. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays - N Sync

11. Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas - Alan Jackson

10. In Like a Lion (Always Winter) - Relient K

9. Jingle Bells - Bing Crosby

8. Silent Night - Mercy Me

7. This Christmas - Chris Brown

6. Pretty Paper - Randy Travis

5. If You Don't Wanna See Santa Claus Cry - Alan Jackson

4. In the Bleak Midwinter - Robert Shaw

3. White Christmas - Bing Crosby

2. I Celebrate the Day - Relient K

1. I Heard the Bells - Mercy Me

Christmas at the Pub

I love beer.  My friends and I get together every other Monday at a pub called Rare Olde Times to talk about our lives and the directions they are heading in, and that is always accompanied by a Smithwicks or two.  I love fall and winter because Sam Adams releases their seasonal brews, and nothing beats drinking an Old Fezziwig while watching a Muppet Christmas Carol.  I love bitter beer and I love coffee beer.  I love pretty much anything but light beer.

Because light beer pretty much sucks.

I also love choral Christmas music.  Few things are more satisfying than popping in a CD of four-part carols and trying to hear and sing along with the bass part.  Gimme that.

The reason I mention both of these loves is that in my mind they intersect in a very wonderful place.  I find many of the carols that I listen to have a very lively rhythm to them - and that is to be expected as so many of them are proclaiming good news or chronicling stories of Christmas feasts enjoyed in the past.  I find myself swinging my arm while I am driving - because in my mind that is not only enjoyable but required.

And I realized last year that my incessant arm swinging is with good reason - these are pubs tunes.  Every time I hear them I imagine myself sitting in a pub somewhere in Surrey, England singing along and swinging my mug in the air.  So when I say these are some of favorite carols, it is solely based on their "beer-swingability". 

Now grab a mug, click the link and swing away as each song beckons you do so in a way only the Robert Shaw arrangements can do.  What else are you doin' right now?

 

Pub Tunes

1. I Saw Three Ships

2. The Boar's Head Carol

3. Wassail Song

4. Masters in this Hall

5. Fum Fum Fum

The World Can't Have Me

I listen to Christian hip-hop all the time.  Even during the Christmas season - much to the annoyance of my wife.  I am still amazed that everyday it seems like I am hearing a song for the first time - even if I have heard it a hundred.  Lines will pop out at me that for some reason I would rap (because yes, I rap along to every song I know the words to) but not actually think about.  It makes me happy.  

That deep down just got twenty two nuggets in your twenty piece happy.  Don't play like that isn't amazing.

So because I have a blog I feel like I wanted to share a song that did that today.  Even Surrey was noddin' her head when we were listening to it.

The song is called "In His Image" and the chorus goes something like this:

Oh, the world can't have me

Say I'm actin' different - I'm just lookin' like my Daddy

I'm made in His image, made in His image, made in His image

Made in His image - I'm livin' like that

It was written by Andy Mineo and PRo - two of the rappers I listen to.  The line that really hit me today was one that PRo said:

"Used to hustle to be on top 'til I finally realized Someone died for that spot"

Pretty simple.  But I find myself wondering - have I actually stopped hustlin' for that spot?  I mean really stopped and said to Christ - it's Yours.  It was to begin with - it is even more so considering the measures You took - and I am done trying to occupy a spot that I am not even close to reaching anyway.  

I'm such a pathetic dude.  I mean scum of the Earth pathetic.  But Christ is good.  Good by true definition - no need for the word better.  And through my pathetic and feeble attempts to occupy that number one spot, Christ has consistently and gracefully and justly reminded me it was never mine to occupy.

I'm made in His image - not cloned.  

So yes I shine His light as much as I can and yes I hustle hard - but that hustlin' I do is to show Christ to a world that can only be changed by one thing - Christ.

So please watch this.  Watch it twice if you aren't used to listening to hip-hop because the words are what makes this song amazing.  I promise you won't regret it.  I mean really - what else are you doin' right now?

The Son Came Out at Night

I write poetry - and it sounds like rap.  I started doing this while I was at Penn State, and for a couple of years now I have been doing it off and on in different ways and with different people - but I have finally come to that conclusion.  

I write poetry and it sounds like rap.

But it's not rap - not in the sense that most people (especially people who do not consistently listen to rap) would characterize it.  It does have a rhythm and a rhyme scheme, but it is not normally a 16 bar, hook, 16 bar, hook, bridge, shout out to the homies type of thing.

It's more like slam poetry.  And I am COMPLETELY okay with that.

So I thought I would blog one of my poems that I recently wrote and performed at our church for a couple of reasons.  First, it is about Christmas and Christmas is like three days away.  Second, I feel like this blog is where I spell out "ME" and so it makes sense that I would post something that is what I have now come to believe is very much that.  

The Son Came Out at Night

For my eyes have seen your salvation

Which you have prepared in the sight of all nations

Light for revelation

That's Luke 2: 30-32 homie go check the citation

In the sight of all the nations He came to rule us

The sickly patients

And heal the broken situation in which we existed

But don't get it twisted

Even before this entrance He still held us up

You could say He was double fistin'

But this - this is

Where He made us like no ohms

Because He eliminated the resistance

Caused by our sin sickness

In the form of an infant

I don't believe in coincidence

So when I think of how He showed up it's no surprise the setting was intimate

And yet the world seemed disinterested

In the form of an inn with no emptiness

No vacancy

But amazingly - so unexpectedly

His arrival was almost missed in an otherwise hectic scene

Expected a King - but this interpretation seems loose

Because the Savior Israel wanted to come on a horse came in the form of somethin' more like a papoose

Redefinition

If they only knew

That the sun (Son) that came out that night would shine a light so bright and so true

That death couldn't hold Him captive

He obliterated that vice

So we waste time idolizing people who only live once because Jesus Christ is livin' twice

So as we stand amongst the darkness

And stare at the stars in the sky

Let the Son of the Most High

Be the one upon which we fix our eyes

Where I Have Been

Trying to take care of this amazing little girl.  Pretty much no time to do anything else.

Surrey Gray Link

 I mean really, what else would I want to be doin' right now?