by Mary Hrovat
In 1995, I made two Christmas mixtapes that I labeled A Very Mary Christmas. I had recently gone through a period of wondering whether it made sense to go on celebrating Christmas, given that I’d stopped believing in the Christian story years earlier. In particular, I’d thought about whether I wanted to go on listening to Christmas music—especially the old traditional carols I love, many of which have explicitly religious lyrics. In the end, I decided that there were other good reasons to celebrate the time around the winter solstice. I made the mixtapes in a spirit of enjoying winter and celebrating both the darkness and the light to be found in family and friends. I kept some of the traditional carols (some only in instrumental versions) and religious music—Handel’s Messiah, for example. In addition, I included music that’s not traditionally considered Christmas music or even winter music; hence the now mildly embarrassing substitution of Mary for Merry.
I put together four 45-minute playlists that covered two 90-minutes cassettes. The first playlist was essentially my very own greatest hits for December. I opened with Jethro Tull’s “Ring Out, Solstice Bells” and followed that up with Canzona per sonare No. 2 by Giovanni Gabrieli, which has always seemed particularly jubilant to me. This playlist included my favorite songs from two albums I remembered from my childhood: one of the Robert Shaw Chorale singing traditional carols a cappella, and a 1963 album called The Spirit of Christmas with the Living Strings. I’m not sure I’d like that one if I heard it for the first time now, but musical taste doesn’t have much to do with it. That album calls up my childhood Christmases as no other music does—a mixed blessing, but it’s too deeply embedded in my memories to ignore. Read more »