Go Christmas!

That's the actual title of an actual song on the cd my Mom, bless her, bought for us when I asked, and I quote, "For a Christmas cd with Christmas carols--you know, songs that talk about Jesus being born and stuff." She showed up, rather apologetically, with something called "The Coolest KidzBop Christmas Ever!"because I told her I liked it when they had the kids singing. Only I'm not so crazy about the kids singing "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," and "Jingle Bell Rock" so we took a little walk to Barnes and Noble today to see if we couldn't exchange it for a little "Joy to the World." A big fat nothing. Even the "Christian pop" compilation was a little too heavy on the "Mary, Did You Know?" and not heavy enough on the "Ave Maria." Ok, Ok. I don't begrudge musicians for not wanting to do the cover tunes, and there are certainly recently penned Christmas songs that I think are good ("Breath of Heaven" is pretty and Chris Rice did something sweet with "Welcome to our World") but would it be terrible if the Jars of Clay just sang "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" without some kind of weird jazzy syncopation? Or, even better, if they rounded up a group of kids and had them sing it? I really don't mind if Harper wants to sing "Frosty the Snowman" when she passes the inflatables, I just want her to hear a really lovely version of "Angels We Have Heard On High" as well. I tried singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" to them while we played in Harper's room today and they both stopped what they were doing and stared at me with what seemed like sick fascination. It's a hard song. And I'm no Julie Andrews. Harper asked me to stop.