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Atheistisch A thousand stars are a cathedral: This is how Siegfried Köhler’s Christmas carol of the same name begins. And continues: “In a quiet world-wide night / A light blooms in the candlelight / That embraces us and makes us happy.” He wrote it shortly after the Second World War, also under the impression of his imprisonment in the Soviet NKVD special camp. It became a popular atheist Christmas carol in the GDR and is widespread in the East to this day. It’s about a contemplative time of rest and in harmony with the world without Christian references (➝ O Tannenbaum). The song hits the same line for non-believers White Wine in the Sun by Tim Minchin: “I really like Christmas. It’s sentimental, I know, but I just really like it. ”Erdmöbels has significantly less of the spirit of the end of the year I don’t care about Christmas to do. The Vandals wanted to reconcile punks and skins with a plate under the fir tree. Their message is: “Oi to the World!” Tobias Prüwer
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Bach Every year again, under Corona with a distance: In many places the famous sounds during Advent Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248), which Johann Sebastian Bach performed for the first time in 1734/35 with the Thomanerchor in Leipzig. “Shout, rejoice, praise the days” – with solemn joy he wanted to bring the New Testament Christmas story (➝ Transeamus usque Bethlehem) to life. The gigantic work with a playing time of two and a half hours almost fades into the background what other Christmas music Bach left behind. Also the famous one Ave Maria, which Charles Gounod composed in 1852 and underlined with text in 1859, goes back to him, more precisely to Prelude No. 1 from the Well-tempered piano. How well it goes with Christmas, this feast of the birth that, painful as it is, brings hope into the world. Irmtraud Gutschke
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Dysfunktional Somewhat dysfunctional as Loriots’ Hoppenstedts Christmas were often with us. Regarded with age-mild melancholy, it was the usual epic minor dramas that played out – and no wonder that I later devoured Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections”, the “most hostile to family” and at the same time “loving” book on the family novel subgenre, as a literary critic in 2002 did wrote splendidly.
As soon as they arrived, various alliances were formed among the four siblings, one sister could always be found in the kitchen, where the radio was on, and the otherwise hated broadcaster SWR 3 (at that time a reason to flee from the provinces to the city!) His ➝ Rotation unwound and played songs that, for once, each of us found somehow good, just as Loriot could amuse the whole family including father and mother. Looking out the window: the village wasn’t moving, we might hear Chris Reas Driving Home for Christmas from 1986. Today I see a video for the song for the first time. An endless drive, windshield wipers, snow, at home. It was just as beautiful. Katharina Schmitz
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Pagan Against the Christian fixation on consumption, New Year’s songs could sing about the pagan origins of the solstice and (revolutionary) new beginning. But in capitalist realism there is only the depressive downside of obsessive-compulsive pleasure. So with U2 (➝ celebrities): “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day” (1983), but the post-communist hope for Polish Solidarność remained. Same beginning with Death Cab for Cutie: “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different” (2003), whereby the political disillusion only leads to dreams. Jena Malone sings my favorite New Year’s song: New year come, new year go (around 2010), who gains stoic strength in her melancholy. Tom Wohlfarth
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Ironic Santa Baby by songwriters Philip Springer and Joan Javits has been one of the best-selling Christmas carols since it was released in 1953. Back then, Broadway star Eartha Kitt took the risk in consumer-oriented, prudish America, with a lolita voice, sending a musical wish list with luxury gifts to “Santa Sugar Daddy”. the Merry Xmas Song by Pink Floyd, who was created as part of a fun performance for the BBC, caricatures Christmas as an empty ritual. It is more explicit then Happy Holiday Der Fantastischen Vier (1991): a song about the dark side of Christmas: loneliness, drugs, poverty (➝ New York). Helena Neumann
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New York The snow trickles softly at the beginning of Fairytale of New York, the most beautiful Christmas carol in the world. But then the camera leads to a New York police station, where the drunks are sitting in the sobering cell. It’s December 24th, Shane MacGowan sings: “It was Christmas Eve babe / In the drunk tank / An old man said to me / won’t see another one.” The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl published the song in December 1987 as Single released, a piece sung as a dialogue about the dream of an Irish immigrant in New York, about a couple who drowned their great love in alcohol. The music video with Matt Dillon as the cop is great and features a band from the NYPD. In Ireland the song climbed to number 1, in England it could Always On My Mind of the Pet Shop Boys but not to be thrown off the throne. Now is the time to hear him again. Marc Peschke
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O Christmas Tree How many times have I got tangled up in the text by looking at the presents? But before we could start unpacking we had to sing together. Before that, we lined up according to size and waited for the bell to sound in front of the closed door; we went in, marveled at the tree of lights, and mother began to sing this song. Then there were presents, and later dinner was served. Every year the same. “Hope and stability” pleased the mother, and the father would not have wanted anything religious (➝ Atheist). Today, when my parents are only in thought with me, I understand what the ritual meant to them: solidarity in love. The folk tune from the 16th century was still widespread later. Sometimes there were ironic texts for the simple melody. The Christmas tree is borrowed from a pagan custom. For the Teutons, evergreen branches at the winter solstice were a symbol of fertility and vitality. Irmtraud Gutschke
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Promised Campino had to take a lot of criticism in 2014 when he realized a German version of Band Aid 30 with celebrities. The front man of the Toten Hosen drummed them up at Bob Geldof’s request Do They Know it’s Christmas? to warble in German translation. The aim of the charity was to raise funds for the fight against Ebola. Now the original was awful, the new version even more. It hailed malice. The content-related criticism ignited the transported image of Africa: Whites calmed their consciences in a paternalistic way. That has nothing to do with sustainable aid. Perhaps the initiator was badly chosen. Die Toten Hosen have been annoying for years with spotted Xmas rock numbers. Tobias Prüwer
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Rotation A Saturday in mid-November in the supermarket around the corner. The cashier, who up to this point had been in his mid-thirties, gripped the cold horror at the sight of my clementines. Horrified look at the colleague at the cash desk next door: “Tomorrow the Christmas rotation is coming.” “Oar, no. We’ll be back here until mid-February. ”You can be sure of my condolences. Then yesterday evening for research purposes there again. I hope for “Let it Snow”, fear “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and prepare myself for the GAU: one of both in the version by Helene Fischer. Instead: energy drink advertising and a soul-pop drink without any seasonal reference. Even in grocery stores there used to be more tinsel. Anne Bopser
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Shakin’ Stevens Even if Christmas festivals are really not the core of social peacefulness, they have a magic of snow-drenched peace (➝ Dysfunktional). Sometimes the anticipation of travel is so effective that one wishes to be able to prolong the path of imagined family joy. Instead, you have to go partying. If you watch the video of Shakin ‘Stevens on Youtube Merry Christmas Everyone look, you understand what I mean: this quiet promise of deep snow, lonely village and harmony. And if the clip is too short for you: You know Chris Nighy aka Billy Mack from the film Actually love? Merry Christmas! Jan C. Behmann
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Let’s go over to Bethlehem Let’s go to Bethlehem is a church choir work by an unknown composer from Silesia that always moved me as a child. I still remember the Christmas masses of my childhood in Leipzig in the GDR (➝ Atheist) in the then university church. The Transeamus was usually the closing music and accompanied the churchgoers to the street. The song tells the biblical Christmas story in the Gospel according to Luke. The Pastorella is handed down from the Breslau Cathedral, the last German cathedral music director Paul Blaschke was able to save the material from besieged Breslau to West Germany.
Today I like to hear a certain version of the Grootkoor in the Netherlands. A strange mood arises there. The choir members exude a well-behaved middle-class, but their singing in Latin, the “Gloria” of the angels sounds like from the hereafter. Magda Geisler
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Together It was arguably the most unusual duo in music: the World War II-era conservative punk singer Bing Crosby and the androgynous rock dude David Bowie. But their duet Peace on Earth / The Little Drummer Boy is still popular today as a classic Christmas carol and an integral part of British and US radio stations during the Christmas season. The two musicians recorded the song for Crosby’s Christmas special in September 1977 A Merrie Olde on. Bowie is said to have hated the song, so the producers built “Peace on Earth” into the duet. After recording the show – Crosby died a month later – he praised Bowie as “a clean boy with a great voice and a real asset to the show.” In 1977 Bowie also played Heroes one. For several years, both songs were available as a bootleg single. Helena Neumann
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