Friday, December 2, 2011

Christmas songs that pass as lullabies



Sometimes I have the surreal experience of learning that my dad's German lullabies are, in fact, beloved cultural institutions. This is the case for this traditional German lied, "Kling, Glöckchen, klingelingeling". I heard this lullaby probably ever single night for the vast majority of my childhood. It was one of my favorites. I can still sing most of it by myself. Of course, as a kid I had no idea what the words meant, but my dad told me they were about bells and snow and coming in from the cold, so I was happy about that.

Imagine my surprise then, when a few days before Christmas 2006, I find myself sitting in one of the big churches in Salzburg, listening to a girl's choir sing that very song. The look on my face was something like this: o_0. Afterwards I yelped, "That's a CHRISTMAS CAROL?!" To which my parents just laughed and nodded. Technically, it's a winter song-there's nothing particularly Christmasy about it. I, however, say that it's appropriate all year round, and that it does in fact make an excellent lullaby.

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