I used to pretty actively avoid anything related to Christmas. But…
Last year in December something strange happened: I began wanting to hear Christmas songs. I have never had a strong dislike for them, except the “holiday” songs that are so obviously genericked there is no meaning left, just feel-good words added to feel-good tunes. But I have not in my memory craved Christmas songs before, even in my childhood. Last year at this time I did. And this year it happened again.
What I crave is specifically the good old Christmas songs that my parents and grandparents knew, back when no one was worried that Christmas might offend the various other religions and degrees of lack thereof. Not that they necessarily are all “Hail Jesus”, although that is good too, but some of them are actually only tangentially related to Christmas as such.
There is just something heavenly about a good Christmas song. They feel similar to me as those pious Catholic books I mentioned yesterday. In a world where everything changes all the time, there are some things that deserve to be actively brought along from the past into the future.
This is what real conservatism is, of course, to conserve good things from the great procession of generations that have passed through this life ahead of us. I understand that in the USA, the word “conservative” has gotten a rather different meaning. Well, with the USA holding less than 5% of the world’s population, I’m afraid they can’t be allowed to define my words for me, especially now in the waning years of that once great nation.
So yeah, I guess my enjoyment of Christmas songs far older than I am means I have turned into a kind of conservative. But I am not a full-fledged Christmas conservative. I have no plans to buy a tree and decorate my home and bake cookies and arrange parties. And I may still spend Christmas Day in Skyrim, although it is not absolutely certain. At least Skyrim is sure to have snow! Perhaps I should replace the game’s music files with Christmas songs… Nah. I think some things are better separately.
Now that you have Spotify in America, you can perhaps hear some of my Christmas favorites! I am pretty sure all of these are older than my parents, probably much older. Obviously then, they are in Norwegian. You should still be able to get the feeling from them.