Is there room at the inn for the Ambient Christmas Song?

Is there room at the inn for the Ambient Christmas Song?

by R. Rojas 

I ask the question about the Ambient Christmas Song because I believe this is a true genre of Christmas music. It is a needed genre in which more composers and songwriters need to write/compose in.

The Ambient Christmas Songs are a few Christmas songs that describe the present ambient of a “Christmas time and space.”

Unlike other Christmas songs, there is no dreaming or telling someone they will be home. It is not a joy-luck song or carol.

It’s as if a person was sitting in a Lazy-Boy at the family Christmas gathering and just observing. What he/she observes is described in poetic detail filling the listener with warmth.

Of course, the king of these Ambient Christmas Songs, is the appropriately named “The Christmas Song” written and composed by Mel Torme and Robert Wells.

"The Christmas Song" sung by 

its co-writer/composer Mel Torme

In “The Christmas Song,” the narrator is describing the “now,” talking about “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” He describes the cold, the sounds, the food, the décor, and the dress of people.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos

The narrator goes on to describe the children, “their eyes all aglow,” and describes what is in the thoughts of these children. Again, it is like one is sitting in the corner at your Christmas party observing.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe
Help to make the season bright
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight

“Christmas Walz” also does this, and deliberately. Frank Sinatra asked Sammy Cahn for a song like “The Christmas Song,” one Sinatra could make his own.

Again, the narrator is there -- in a certain time and space -- observing:

Frosted windowpanes

Candles gleaming inside

Painted candy canes on the tree

Santa's on his way

He's filled his sleigh with things

Things for you and for me

Although that is the only descriptive part of the song, it still works into describing the ambience of a solitary Christmas moment. “The Christmas Waltz” is short. Just two stanzas, but it does its job.

"The Christmas Waltz" sung Tony Bennett 

with the Count Basie Orchestra

“Christmas Eve” by Carleton Carpenter, most famously sung by Billy Eckstine, is another:

There's a candle in the window
There's a legend we believe
Santa, here's our plea, you can bet that he
wouldn't miss a Christmas Eve

There's a stocking on the fireplace
There are presents to receive
And there's mistletoe, where is Romeo?
Steals a kiss on Christmas Eve

 

“Christmas Eve” should be more popular than it is. In this song, Carpenter’s lyrics describes what the narrator is seeing in the now: “candle in the window.” 

Billy Eckstine performing "Christmas Eve"

He goes on to observe the décor, the presents, and the mistletoe. Then, he gently moves on to describe the nativity scene in a refrain which later repeats:

In the corner, on a table

Underneath a shining star

Is the holy Christmas stable

And three wise men from afar

There is always a final commentary and contemplations from the narrators to end these songs. It’s like a “Merry Christmas” wish, a “Happy New Year,” something more spiritual, saying it “many times, many ways.”

Torme and Wells say:

And so I'm offering this simple phrase

To kids from one to 92

Although it's been said many times, many ways

Merry Christmas to you

Sammy Cahn. in “Christmas Watz” give us:

It's that time of year when the world falls in love

Ev'ry song you hear seems to say "Merry Christmas,

"May your New Year dreams come true"

And this song of mine in three-quarter time

Wishes you and yours the same thing, too.

Carpenter closes “Christmas Eve” with a sort of peace on earth, “wish Christmas can be everyday” request:

All this holiday contentment
All this love should never leave
We'd be doing right if we made each night
More like Christmas Eve

I do not put all songs in this category. I am sure there are lesser-known Ambient Christmas Songs. These songs must be indoors. I do not know why, but the Christmas party goer is observing. I know the chestnuts roasting in “The Christmas Song” are roasting in an open fire. So maybe, it’s outside, at least for that bit.

The Ambient Christmas Song remained largely an American genre. This was at least until the 1980s when John Rutter, from across the pond (UK), took a shot at it.

Take John Rutter’s “The Very Best Time of the Year” where he starts with the ambient description and ends with the closing observance that this is the “very best time of the year”:

Christmas trees and boughs of holly,

Yuletide logs and mistletoe;

Candles burning bright, and meadows frosty white,

And faces in the firelight′s glow;

Sounds of happy children's voices

Singing carols that you love to hear;

Then the silence of the night

And the winter air so still and clear.

Feels like you could reach and touch the sky,

Or catch a star and fly away;

Feels like you could wish for peace on earth,

And all at once it would come, some day.

Families and friends together

Feel a special kind of love and cheer,

Sharing all the joys of Christmas time,

The very best time of year.

The very best time,

That strange, enchanted time,

That shining, magic time of year.

In the John Rutter Christmas Album (Collegium Records, 2002), Rutter states in the liner notes, the American connections to this song. 

"Best Time of the Year" performed by John Rutter, The Cambridge Singers, and the City of London Sinfonia

Written in 1984 as a gift for two “noted American choral musicians who were among the first to welcome the composer into the American choral community….” Rutter’s song is written for chorus. The other Christmas Ambient Songs were written for solo voice but often performed by choirs: “Christmas Walz,” more true for “The Christmas Song.” I have only seen one choral performance of “Christmas Eve,” a video which I cannot find. However, the original recording by Eckstine has a chorus backing him.

"The Christmas Song " (arr. Arthur Harris) performed the Morman Tabernacle Choir (now the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square)

"The Christmas Waltz" performed by the All-American Boy Choir.

"Best Time of the Year" (arrangement 

by Owain Park and Anna Lapwood) 

performed by Pembroke College Chapel Choir

I tried to find other examples. Malcolm Williamson’s “This Christmas Night.”  D. Fraser’s “This Christmastide (Jessye’s Carol).” However, they do not match up.

The simple solitary observation of a room at Christmas makes a great Christmas song and more composers and song writers should give the Ambient Christmas Song a try.

Carpenter's "Christmas Eve" performed by Adam Swanson

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