(I wrote this in a particularly snarky frame of mind, so if you aren’t in a good mood or are a Yankees fan, please back away from the computer and save reading this for another time. :-))
I know I spend way too much money at Amazon MP3…but I’ve been addicted to music since I first started developing my own collection. (Prior to that my tastes were my father’s…basically adult contemporary. It’s still music I enjoy and have great respect for, but at some point…with a 70’s teen…Olivia Newton John and Englebert Humperdink had to give way to Kansas and Journey—after a short detour into The Village People. Come on, you gotta admit “Y.M.C.A” and “Macho Man” are catchy!)
Either way, I check out Amazon MP3 at least once every 24 hours to see what their MP3 Daily Deal is. More often than not it is a genre I have little interest in (it’s often indie coffee-house type stuff), but it does mean that during each visit Amazon’s whizz-bang computer gets a shot at enticing me to buy something else I don’t really need, and it knows from my buying history I’m a pretty big fan of Christmas music. (If you check out my “Christmas Album ‘Must Haves’ (2011 Version)” you’ll see I am a traditionalist…give me the old standards sung by people who could have been my grandparents or great-grandparents.) One recent time when their page refreshed Amazon MP3 shocked me by suggesting “A Very Gaga Holiday” by…well…that’s pretty obvious. 🙂
Why shocked?
Although I don’t really have difficulty with non-Christians singing Christmas songs, Lady Gaga is about as polar from the spirit of Christ as any entertainer out there. Okay, that is a bit hyperbolic, but one only has to remember something like a half-naked picture of her in a Yankees jersey (taken in public) to realize she probably doesn’t spend a whole bunch of time sitting at the feet of the One who is the original reason for any Christmas album. (Not to mention, it was a Yankees shirt…if that doesn’t prove she is the spawn of Satan, nothing does. :-))
What do you think? Should non-Christians (and/or people who espouse non-Christian values in word and/or action) sing Christmas songs? Was my mental reaction overboard? (For all I know my discomfort might, in great measure, be due to the near-blasphemous way the record’s cover depicts her in a Madonna-like pose…and I don’t mean the present-day Madonna whose music some feel Lady Gaga rips off…and whose Kabbalah-loving “material girl” personhood would also be a Christmas contradiction. I am not a Mary worshiper, but she was Jesus’ mother, and just take a look at Luke 1 to see how non-Gaga she is…and I’m not just talking about the unlikeliness of using the word “virgin” and “Gaga” in the same sentence.)
But, again, I digress. Is Christmas such a secular holiday that it really should not matter who releases a Christmas CD? (From what I can tell, all of the songs included in Lady Gaga’s may be secular…but I can assure you I don’t intend on blowing any money on it to find out…and it’s not available on Spotify. Of course, not having to listen to her can be counted in the “blessing” column in my book. :-))
Or, should we Christians at least avoid the holiday music of those who are clearly anti-God, whether they claim to be in our fold or not? Should we tell them to get their own holiday to sing about and leave ours alone?
No matter what your thoughts are (and please take my humorous exaggerations as such) may you, like the Magi, truly find the Child whose arrival we celebrate December 25th each year…and a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.
And throw out your Lady Gaga CDs and buy some Christmas Nat King Cole instead. 🙂
(Credit for the Lady Gaga album cover image to Amazon MP3.)