Garrison Keillor, Unitarian-Universalists, and Silent Night

[rivka]

(I should totally have a chalice-in-a-Santa-hat icon for this post, but I don't. Alas.)

So Garrison Keillor wrote a cranky and mean-spirited column for Salon in which, I guess, he tried to horn in on Bill O'Reilly's lucrative and attention-grabbing "War on Christmas" routine. Except that because Keillor operates in a different cultural millieu than O'Reilly does, he decides to call out Unitarian-Universalists and Jews:

You can blame Ralph Waldo Emerson for the brazen foolishness of the elite. He preached here at the First Church of Cambridge, a Unitarian outfit (where I discovered that "Silent Night" has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God) [...]

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday -- if you're not in the club, then buzz off.

As they say elsewhere on the web, in a turn of phrase so useful that it quickly became part of my regular vocabulary: "I wish I had a thousand eyes - I'd roll them all." Because let's take a look at the shocking way that UUs have butchered the carol "Silent Night." You might want to send small children out of the room for this one, and pregnant women and people with heart conditions should exercise caution before clicking this link to #251 in the UU hymnal.

The UU blogosphere has been all over this one, of course. I particularly like the thoughtful and comprehensive response by Rev. Cynthia Landrum, which sums it up thusly:

On the other hand, Keillor is falling prey to a major fallacy that says, "the way I remember things from my own childhood is the way things always have been and always should be." His personal history has become the authoritative version of what Christmas should be, and what hymns should be.

But, of course, neither Christmas nor hymnody is like that.

The funny thing is that the version of "Silent Night" Keillor is so vigorously defended is a not-very-faithful English translation of a German carol, "Stille Nacht." A UU musician posted a literal translation of the German carol. The scansion wouldn't work to actually sing it, but it has some beautifully intimate mother-infant imagery:

Silent night, holy night
All is sleeping, alone watches
Only the close, most holy couple.
Blessed boy in curly hair,
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Sleep in heavenly peace!

The literal translation from the German also has a fantastic line in the third verse: Son of God, oh how laughs Love out of your divine mouth.

Is Garrison Keillor singing about Love being laughed from the infant Jesus' mouth? No? Then he can shut the hell up about how awful it is when UUs change the words to hymns.

As far as Keillor's anti-Semitism: I don't even know where to start when it comes to those horrible Jews, ruining Christmas for the poor misunderstood outnumbered Christians by, I guess, holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to like "The Christmas Song." No, wait! No Christian likes that song, right? The reason it gets played ad nauseam during the Christmas season is because Jews control the media. Now it becomes clear to me. As I said: I wish I had a thousand eyes - I'd roll them all.

Comments

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Keillor has aged into a nasty old man, but it's sad.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

I've loved much of Keillor's work, but there has been some over-the-line cranky stuff in the last year or so. Sad indeed.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I hate to break it to him, but that's the very same translation that we horrible un-Christian Episcopalians use. And the EC-USA is in full communion with those horrible un-Christian Lutherans! Oh, wait.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It probably isn't, exactly, but if the differences are subtle enough to escape a churchgoing Episcopalian, it's hard to understand why Keillor is so exercised about them.

(You probably sing "Christ the savior is born" at the end of the second verse and "Jesus, Lord, at thy birth" at the end of the third, right? The UU hymnal has "sleep in heavenly peace" at the end of all three verses. That's pretty much the extent of the shocking anti-Christianism.)

[naomikritzer]

Oh!

I even know the hymn pretty well and yet I kept looking at it and thinking maybe it was some other hymnal page you should have linked to because I was not seeing any differences at ALL.

I am so disappointed. I was really hoping for something more along the lines of "God Rest Ye, Unitarians" (which is awesome if what you want is something hilarious. "Oh tidings of reason and doubt, reason and doubt! Ohhhhh tidings of reason and doubt!")

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's true! My eye slid right past those signs of your dooooom. Gawd, what a tiresome old man he's become.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Of course, you *would* say that, being a Unitarian and all. You don't realize that removing "Christ the savior is born" from "Silent Night" is the same as actually removing him from the earth and its history, condemning us all to suffer for all eternity. The gates of heaven are barred, Satan has won the ultimate victory, we are all doomed and in deepest despair, separated from our creator in a world that has no hope, no light, no meaning.


Assuming you believe in the redemption, which I don't.

So, who wants some fruitcake? Or homemade candles? Or home-roasted coffee, or mulled wine? Toffee? Toffee goes great with eternal despair; I don't know how anyone could handle eternal despair without toffee.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

roflmao

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Keillor himself was raised Plymouth Brethren, and they don't even have hymns, so I'm not sure why he feels like he even has a dog in this fight.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Wow, really? He's been a professional Lutheran for as long as I can remember. All those rambling stories about Lake Wobegon's covered-dish suppers...I shall change my appraisal from "tiresome old man" to "humorless twit."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

He was never Lutheran himself. Which may be, I think, why he fetishizes it so much.

Note: I think Lutherans are awesome. Keillor, not so much.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm fond of many Lutherans (except the Missouri Synod). Keillor sure talks like he's a Lutheran, and I'm going to have to revise my estimate yet again. Goodbye, childhood pleasures!

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Buh. I read over the lyrics. Those are the ones I grew up with, except for the substitution of "child of G-d" for "son of G-d".

What a bizarre person.

[avram]

No Christian anywhere is in a position to complain about Jews appropriating their culture. Not as long as Christians still consider the Torah part of their Bible. Not while they still worship the Jewish deity as part of their Trinity, and a rabbi as another part, and consider Israel their Holy Land.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

It's much more complete than that, really.

Matthew 5:17: Think not that I am come to destroy (Torah), or (Nevi'im): I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

18: For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from (Torah), till all be fulfilled.

*^*^*

Matthew 10:5: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:

6: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

*^*^*

Matthew 15:24: But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

*^*^*

From what he says, it's fairly clear Jesus thought of himself as a Jew, and thought he was only relevant to Jews.

(I know, I know, this only makes everyone mad at me. But in the accounts we have, it's what he says.)

[naomikritzer]

When my friend haddayr (who you should read, if you don't, and she should read you; I think you two would hit it off) posted about this last week, I clicked through and tried to read it ironically and it just didn't work.

I have never been a huge fan of Keillor but he didn't always make me blink and say "WTF?" Dude, I don't like "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" either but it's not any worse than "Feliz Navidad" or GOD HELP US ALL that horrifyingly saccharine Christmas Shoes song. I'm pretty sure you can't blame Feliz Navidad on anyone Jewish and I'm damn sure the Christmas Shoes were not the fault of a Jew or Unitarian.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

And, as a Unitarian member of the commentariat at Making Light has pointed out, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" is about as Unitarian a hymn as you can get -- purpose-written for Unitarian use BY A UNITARIAN PASTOR. So Keillor hereby loses all rights to sing it until he sucks it up about UUs singing Silent Night. :->

Also, ICUaMC is, imho, much more doctrinally-correct and accurate to the bible (specifically, to John) than, say, oh, Little Drummer Boy or We Three Kings.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

It is odd how one can get into the mindset that the only proper spirituality for anyone is the one that has sustained me. For myself, it works in the opposite way as Keillor; only after I was born again and started going to church did I realize how lifeless the canonical arrangements of "Amazing Grace" and "Morning Has Broken" compared to the folk renditions that I was exposed to in my agnostic youth.

For my part, the antithesis of the spirit of Christmas is bringing unease to others, doubly so in the way they choose to celebrate the season. So I will wish you a double portion of cheer and revelation to make up for Mr. Keillor's deficit.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

If we Jews are controlling the media, how did this piece of dreck get published?!

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Darn it - we let one slip through. Let's be more vigilant next time, shall we?

....It's exhausting wielding all this power, that's what it is.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

If you're going to ruin Christmas for everyone else, you could AT LEAST do a proper job of it. Come ON.

[laurent-atl.livejournal.com]

this is all the more amusing to me as an atheist since as far as i understand, the original christian pilgrims all those old white men claim as their forefathers would have been very much against the idea of celebrating christmas in the first place.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

Ugh. ugh ugh ugh. and I always liked prairie home companion...

[platypus]

I am boggled. I was raised Catholic and we had purple mimeographed sheets of carols every year for the Christmas pageant, including the second and third verses of things like "Silent Night." I thought I knew them pretty well, but I did not notice the changes when I followed the link. And I listened to Nat King Cole's version this very morning, so I have no excuse. Or (gasp) maybe they aren't actually such profound revisions.

I love the literally translated version.

[lerryn.livejournal.com]

Apparently said curmudgeon has not heard of the folk process. The words of folk songs always are adjusted over time, whether because someone can't remember original lyrics, or thinks others fit better. Funny thing, melodies sometimes shift as well. To pull an example off the top of my head, I know three versions of Black Jack Davy (not to meantion the Raggle Taggle Gypsy or the Whistling Gypsy Rover, which are basically the same story.) A song being a hymn doesn't make it magically (or wait, should it be blessedly?) immune.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who yells "It's the folk process!" every time I mess up the words or melody of a song. ;-)

[telerib.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't see the changes til you pointed them out either.

I will admit some difficulty with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," if only because it took me by surprise. I was at a service with Spud, when he was small enough to be held the whole time, but aware enough to protest if he was bored. I was walking him up and down the Charles St. aisle to keep him happy and the hymn started up. Hymn book-less, I just started singing along... and then realized I was singing something different from the rest of the congregation.

In retrospect, I'm not really surprised that "and ransom captive Israel" didn't make the UU cut.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Hymn book-less, I just started singing along... and then realized I was singing something different from the rest of the congregation.

Hee! Even now, this happens to me all the time. Albeit sometimes by choice - there's a hymn we do (I forget which) to the tune of "Holy, Holy, Holy," and I cannot resist singing the line "God in three persons, blessed Trinity" in the appropriate spot.

One of the things I like about the Rev. Cyn post I quote briefly above is that she goes into the whole question of hymn-changing in depth. I don't know if you've encountered the UU hymn that's to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers?" That would seem like a perfect example of oh-those-silly-UUs-appropriating-Christian-songs, except that it turns out that "Forward Through the Ages" is just as old as "Onward Christian Soldiers." I had no idea.

Reusing hymn tunes, and rewriting lyrics to suit your theology, is both older and more pervasive than UUism. It makes a lot of sense when you think about the centuries-old challenge of hauling a bunch of untrained singers, most of whom probably can't read music, through episodes of unrehearsed choral singing every week. It helps if they recognize the tune, so the same ones (or minor variations) appear again and again.

But yeah, I have to admit that I pretty much think the UU hymnal ruined "O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

[(Anonymous)]

Reusing hymn tunes, and rewriting lyrics to suit your theology, is both older and more pervasive than UUism.

No argument! What bugs me the most, though, are the "almost but not quite" adaptations. I like both "Greensleeves" and "What Child Is This?" and don't suffer cognitive dissonance when one or the other is played, I think mostly because the words and themes are totally different. Same with filk in the SCA - I'm more apt to like it if it uses the tune from some song but does *not* rip off close to half of the words.

So, if one wanted to do a Solstice carol to the tune of "Greensleeves," I would be more kindly inclined towards a refrain starting with:

"Come, dance on the darkest night
And welcome back the dying light"

than

"This, this is the sun, the king
On darkest night to him we sing"

[telerib.livejournal.com]

Er, that was me, if it wasn't obvious.