Music Mondays: DOWN WITH THESE CHRISTMAS HYMNS!

Last week, I shared some secular Christmas songs I can't help but like. 

This week, I'm going the opposite direction. Here are a few classic Christian Christmas hymns that I do not at all enjoy. I will say this at the outset, there are plenty of renditions I don't like of songs I actually enjoy. Christmas hymns seem to uniquely appeal to artists' desire to show off (cough, Pentatonix, cough). 

Please, by all means sing "O Holy Night" but I want to walk away from your performance worshiping the Lord rather than impressed by how great a voice you have. 

Anyway, this list is not about those kinds of songs. This list is comprised of Christmas hymns I consider inadequate that are probably considered classics by most.

3. "Mary Did You Know?" - Mark Lowry

First of all, it is kind of incredible that Lowry, who made his name by being a Christian version of Weird Al Yankovich, penned this song. My issue with this song is that it fails a basic theological review. I'll give Lowry benefit of the doubt, he seems to have written this out of a sense of wonder and curiosity about the Christmas story. Yet reading the early chapters of Luke, it is clear Mary could emphatically answer "yes" to a number of the questions he poses in the song. I remember preaching on this subject a few years ago, and after close study, my conclusion was Mary didn't know everything about how Jesus' life and mission would play out. But she knew plenty. 

2. "The Christmas Shoes" - NewSong

I liken this song to the movie, Schindler's List. Both are meaningful pieces of art. Both tell important stories. But I only needed to watch Schindler's List once and I was good. You listen to this song the first time, you let your heart feel things and you can move on. Since radio and movies are different mediums, you don't always have a choice about listening to this song. It's a morbid song that has been widely criticized for what it seems to imply and for the way it uses Christmas to make us sad. Shouldn't Christmas be about the joy of the birth of our Savior?

And no, I have exactly zero desire to watch the movie based on the song. I'd rather watch Schindler's List again.

1. "The Little Drummer Boy" - every artist known to man (orig. Katherine Davis)

If I were to believe the best about this song, as I did with Lowry above, I can see that this song tries to express humility and service to Jesus. But how often has that gotten lost within the many many covers of the song since it was written in 1941? And what to do we remember when we think of this song, the "pa-rum-pa-pa-pums", right? 

Even good versions like the one above can't quite do it for me. Btw, what's up with that video? Did the birth of Christ happen during the American Revolution? Did they go through a time-portal that I completely missed? 

Maybe I'm just channeling my inner Scrooge with this and these other songs. But they always pull me away from truly "getting in the Christmas spirit."