Forget Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, forget N*Sync and Paul McCartney ... think Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Forget White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, and all those awful live-action Disney Christmas movies about dogs, kids, airports, CGI toys and Santa Claus .... think Lord of the Rings. Why do you think they released the Lord of the Rings movies right around Christmas? It wasn't for the money; it was because Jesus is like Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond COMBINED*.
Christmas ... epic. Zero-sum, Good versus Evil, Winner-takes-all. Christus Victor and Satanus Loser.
And so, with visions of sugar plums supplanted by visions of power and violent upheaval, it is with no small dose of irony that I give you a Jesuit Christmas Carol hacked up and overblown past all reasonable tempo markings and senses of good taste. I apologize in advance, but at least there's a kickin' solo in the middle. No, I really did hack it up: there are two eighth notes missing from every measure. If you find any of them lying around, please put them in the nearest recycling receptacle.
While listening, feel free to imagine something epic and vaguely spiritual about Christmas. OR ...
I invite you to imagine Jesuit missionaries, with beaver pelts slung over their backs, latin dancing in the forests of Quebec. In between all that hard work recontextualizing the gospel, and in between all that time spent plotting world domination, they must have had to shake the hips a little to stay warm. And at the end of the day, there's nothing really epic about that.
* Calvin-nerds : Three-fold office ???
PS My mom actually wanted me to write a Christmas song about Sarah Palin, told from the perspective of a moose that was being hunted by her. This will have to do.
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