10 Non-Christmas Songs You Should Listen To This Christmas Week While not traditionally Christmas songs, these melodies remind us why the incarnation of the Savior of the world was oh so glorious.
Christmas music is the best — everything from Mariah Carey’s legendary “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to Nat King Cole’s classic “The Christmas Song” to every rendition of the sacred “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Besides “Do You Hear What I Hear?” which is excepted as objectively the worst Christmas song, these holiday ditties spread joy and cheer for so many reasons, not the least of which their youthful nostalgia, their anticipation of intimate reunion with those we love, and especially their celebration of the birth of the Savior of the world.
But the last reason often becomes distorted. This time of year, assuming we pause to think of the Christ child at all, we applaud our toddler shepherds at their Sunday School programs, spend a few moments pondering the virgin birth, and use nativity sightings to remind those less-theologically-aware around us that ackshully we don’t know how many wise men there were and they weren’t in the inn with Mary and Joseph and the babe.
I exaggerate a little. But if other Christians are anything like I am, they may find themselves so intentionally declaring “Jesus is the reason for the season” that they forget — from about Thanksgiving to the New Year — that Jesus is the reason for every season. It’s easy to look at the nativity and marvel about holy God taking on human flesh, but that’s just the first page of the story — there’s plenty more marveling to do. The virgin birth sets the scene for the whole miraculous gospel to which we cling the rest of the year.
Here’s 10 songs on which to meditate over Christmas week. Maybe you’ve heard one or two of them play once or twice over holiday seasons past, but they’re largely non-Christmas melodies. These songs, however, put the incarnation message squarely into the context of the rest of this overwhelming good news we call the gospel — not just that Jesus was born, but that he was born in order to die a spotless lamb to take away the sins of the world. Good tidings of great joy, indeed!