Two things

[conuly]

First, somebody on my friends list recently posted this video which I'd never heard before and I think I like a lot.

Relatedly, at Eva's school apparently they play music during passing periods rather than having a bell. A group of kids chooses the playlist, and they announced that during this month they'd be playing Christmas music, so Eva dutifully went up and reminded them that lots of kids at the school don't celebrate Christmas and they should play something else. They were open to this and asked, naturally, what she recommended instead, which stymied her because she hadn't thought that far ahead. (Lesson learned: Always have your alternatives prepped and ready to go!) So she asked me for advice, and now I am asking you. Are there any thoroughly secular wintery celebratory songs that are worth suggesting?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

"Jingle Bells"

"Jingle Bell Rock"

"Let It Snow"

"Winter Wonderland"

Straight No Chaser's "Christmas Can-Can" maybe? like I can argue that both ways

[brokenallbroken]

Jinx!

How did I forget Jingle Bell Rock?!

[bibliofile]

But please, no secular songs sung by cats or dogs. Please no.

Nice pagan carols: The Wassail Song, I Saw Three Ships, and The Holly & the Ivy.

From the last 100 years: Teenage Fanclub, "Winter"; Mamas & Papas, "California Dreamin'".

[jesuswasbatman]

The Holly and tne Ivy is very Christian past its first verse.

[bibliofile]

Hah! I believe it. Oh well.

[conuly]

Every aspect of the holly tree is dissected to see if it can be used as a metaphor for Jesus.

[conuly]

I saw three ships is explicitly about the Virgin Mary and Christ showing up on said ships.

[bibliofile]

Oh of course it is. (And I forgot that it does mention Xmas Day, argh.) Never mind.

Let this er be a lesson to you: Don't believe everything people write on the Internet! (And by you I mean me.)

[alexseanchai]

Mary Chapin Carpenter, "The Longest Night of the Year"

[offcntr]

I second this one! Also remembered from my radio days, Susan McKeown's Through the Bitter Frost and Snow.

I might go through some old playlists and see I anything else jumps out at me.

[brokenallbroken]

Jingle Bells? I think Let It Snow and that one super-annoying Snow song from Holiday Inn don't mention Christmas. Nor do No Place Like Home For The Holidays and Walking In A Winter Wonderland. Oh, and Sleigh Ride!
Ice Skater's Waltz is a nice instrumental.

[darkoshi]

Jingle Bells
Let it Snow
Sleigh Ride
Frosty the Snowman
Aspenglow
Winter Wonderland (except maybe for the mention of Parson Brown?)
Deck the Halls? (I'm not sure if Yule only refers to Christmas, or if it can refer to any midwinter celebration)
Home for the Holidays (unless one doesn't even want mention of holidays)

[alexseanchai]

Yule is a pre-Christian Germanic thing originally

this does not make the question of "is 'Deck the Halls' secular?" any easier to resolve, though

another one that seems wintry to me, though not in a celebratory way

[darkoshi]

Walking in the Air (from the Snowman)

[bibliofile]

(What, nothing from Frozen or Frozen 2?)

[hudebnik]

Which reminds me of something that's bothered me for years: on December 26, all those secular winter songs, having nothing to do with Christmas, abruptly stop being played on the radio and in shopping malls. Especially since in NYC we usually have no significant "winter weather" until January, by which time all the winter-weather songs have been packed away until next December. As far as the music industry is concerned, anything after midnight of December 25 is Ordinary Time (while in the church calendar, Christmastide has just begun).

[redbird]

Maybe Jethro Tull's "Solstice Bells," if they're interested in something less obscure/overplayed. (My complaint about Christmas play lists isn't so much that they're full of religious music, as that they all seem to be the same, and short.)

[erinptah]

Ooh, that's a good one. (The Jethro Tull Christmas Album has a couple other not-specifically-Christmas songs, but having actually looked at the lyrics, they might not be the best choices for school-age kids...)

Trans-Siberian Orchestra also has some great upbeat secular-winter songs on their Christmas albums -- First Snow, Appalachian Snowfall, Wizards in Winter, and Wish Lizt all qualify.

[low_delta]

"Frosty the Snowman."

Someone mentioned "Jingle Bells" "Jingle Bell Rock" "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland"

These songs may be secular, but they're so associated with the season that I'd be surprised if they weren't already on the list.

[movingfinger]

Another vote for "Sleigh Ride!"

"Favorite Things"

They might like "Marshmallow World" which for some reason is heard just about nowhere (I know, I know, Dino...)

How about "You're A Mean One, Mister Grinch?" Too Christmas-adjacent?

"December Night" from the Pentatonix

I always think of "New York City" from They Might Be Giants as a holiday kind of song, I guess because it's snowing in the first lyric.

ETA: Simon and Garfunkel, "Hazy Shade of Winter"

The Vince Guaraldi instrumental tracks off Charlie Brown's Christmas might be okay?

Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal" but maybe won't work on a PA system.

Fats Waller's "Swinging Them Jingle Bells" is the least Christmassy thing on the Stash album (which includes my perennial favorite, Ella singing "Santa Claus Got Stuck In My Chimney").

EVERYTHING FROM FROZEN, naturally

"Fox in the Snow," Belle and Sebastian

[sonia]

Anything from Kitka’s Wintersongs album. http://www.kitka.org/shop/wintersongs-cd Not all of them are secular, but they’re in languages other than English and definitely not already overplayed.

[cloudsinvenice]

"The Snow It Melts The Soonest" is a nice traditional one - it's been performed by lots of people, but I know it because of Sting's winter album, If On A Winter's Night...; I also like that album's version of his own song, "The Hounds of Winter":

The Snow It Melts The Soonest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl1UrIVSWJI
The Hounds of Winter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNYZY87Yp98

And there's always "The New Year" by Death Cab, albeit a rather wistful and disappointed take on the turning of the year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MwhxdGAnic

[gatheringrivers]

I'd suggest "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" but I'm not sure that would even be appropriate...

I'm demented, so my personal choice would often be something off of the holiday album(s) over here

[conuly]

It's really a Christmas song anyway. I don't think there'll be any traction for removing secular Christmas songs entirely, but that doesn't mean I want to suggest more of them.

[rhoda_rants]

*FLAILS* I HAVE A 'WINTRY MIX' PLAYLIST!!

Although mine is mostly Goth/Metal/New Wave/Emo stuff that happens to be Winter-themed so it's probably not appropriate for your purposes. (Ex: "Love Like Winter" by AFI, Nightwish's cover of "Walking In the Air," "Winterborn" by the Cruxshadows--stuff like that.)

Sorry, this was a bit useless, I got too excited too fast. :( Ignore me.

Any other version of "Walking In the Air" would work though.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Hannuaka in Santa Monica

What about a Christmas song in Cantonese? (NPR was reccomending today)

[silveradept]

Much already suggested, but I would also deposit some of the instrumental musics from entities like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and the vast repertoire of wind band and classical selections, such as Fergal Carrol's Winter Dances in addition to things like the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Less worry about lyrical appropriateness, more good music for everyone.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bosMQqV2aDw For daring kids. Auld Lang Syne and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_MV_tAO4A for not at all daring kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkiD7SO07aE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxdW28MvZTo for internationally inclusive kids.. Note that the tree is, in all cases, a New Year tree, suitable for atheists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWQZBmJf6M

[polydad.livejournal.com]

"Sleigh bells" by Leroy Anderson.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Walking in a winter wonderland?

[conuly]

That is such a weird song though. Or it doesn't have to be, but some people do such weird things to the lyrics, like i don't even know.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not one I like much myself, but I think it fits your criteria.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Why do they have to be "thoroughly secular"....? Songs referencing Christianity are okay, but everybody else's religion can't even be mentioned?

[conuly]

In fact, when I said "thoroughly secular" I meant "no Christmas, no Santa, no tree". So ideally they wouldn't mention Christmas.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Santa is secular, especially the modern American version; he's not part of anybody's religion. The Yule Tree is originally Pagan, as are most of the Christmas holiday traditions, and has no Christian religious significance. The Winter Solstice is an astronomical event - "axial tilt is the reason for the season" - as well as a Pagan holiday.

The point being, 'secular' means 'not religious', but that's a huge slippery slope, as the very word (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity) presupposes a Christian world-view:

"The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the European Enlightenment. Furthermore, since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them.[7] In many cultures, "little conceptual or practical distinction is made between 'natural' and 'supernatural' phenomena" and the very notions of religious and nonreligious dissolve into unimportance,[8] nonexistence, or unawareness, especially since people have beliefs in other supernatural or spiritual things irrespective of belief in God or gods."

Being both a teacher and a Wiccan High Priestess - and later as the mother and auntie of Pagan children - I had to address this question every Yuletide for decades. My ultimate solution in my own classrooms was 'All Classical Music, All The Time' - Bach and Vivaldi wrote most of their stuff for the Church, but the kids didn't know that, and the Nutcracker Suite is as traditionally Christmassy as anyone could wish, while still containing less than 2% Christian imagery (or none at all, if you count the tree as Pagan.) Baroque music keeps a classroom cheerful and productive like nothing else, and there's nothing even the pickiest parent or director can say against it, so that might be a solution for Eva's school too. "If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it."