The art of the Christmas song is dying, but if that seems a cause for celebration, remember it means we'll still be stuck with the ones we've got, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.
Prepare ye for some facts. Fact one: the Apostles sang songs of praise, many of which were based on the Psalms. As founders of the churches, their enthusiasm inspired their new congregations into song. One of the earliest known Christmas songs is from the fourth century - Jesus refulsit omnium, composed by St Hilary of Poitiers.
Fact two: the newest melody on the 25 most- performed holiday songs list of 2003 in the US, just released by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), is Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime, a UK Top 10 hit in 1979.
Fact three: during the 12th century, St Francis of Assisi formally introduced Christmas carols to church services. As patron of the arts, he inspired the composers and poets of the day to deliver Christmas music.
Fact four: in the past 25 years, composers have experienced extreme difficulty in getting high-profile names to record new Christmas songs. And publishers just aren't interested in sentimental holiday songs any more.
Whether we like them or not, it seems the art of the Christmas song is dying a slow, inexorable death; if we're not careful, we'll be hearing the well-known tunes of the golden age of Christmas music, the 1940s and 1950s - virtually all the secular Christmas songs we hear and sing today were written between 1934 and 1958 - forever and ever and ever.
Ron Clancy, author of American Christmas Classics, reckons that songs such as Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (1934), White Christmas (1941), Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1944), Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (1945), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1949) and Frosty the Snowman (1950) resonate even today because they were written at a time when the US had a common music culture. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, he maintains, the music that tightly bound people together was of the swing and Sinatra/crooner variety. These days, music culture is too genre-driven and segmented for people to be united as one nation under a groove. Lyrics, too, are falling by the wayside as beats-driven music becomes more prevalent.
Memory and home tend to be the reins that tether Christmas songs to our lives. Singer Maria Tecce, fresh from her Christmas song shows at Dublin's Helix, remembers O Holy Night and Little Drummer Boy with fondness. The "simplicity, innocence and pure joy" of those songs resonates for her even today.
"Now I express what Christmas is for me," she says, "which is a little bit of everything, but mostly people. Very little of my Christmas is about materialism; when I give gifts to people it's things I make in my kitchen. There's so much beauty in those songs - they're uncluttered, unadorned, and interestingly my own life has become similarly simplified.
"They are songs that are classic and stand the test of time. The simpler they are the more universal they can be for everyone."
Dana Rosemary Scallon MEP agrees. For her, good Christmas memories are made more out of simplicity, innocence and adhering to a community spirit than anything else. Her favourite Christmas song is White Christmas.
"Sorry to be so predictable!" she says. "I must have heard it as a child, so it's very much a part of my memories of Christmas, and with our children we try to make a lot out of Christmas. Another favourite of mine is Silent Night - it's got to be one of the loveliest carols, so beautiful and simple."
Dana points to its use as a song very much within and of the community.
"It's very important to do things for other people, to keep alive a community spirit," she says. "If it's dying out it's not young people's faults, it's the fault of my generation."
Those who study and enjoy secular Christmas music, however, hold out hope that there are classics still being written. James Richliano, author of Angels We Have Heard: The Christmas Song Stories, highlights the recent recording by Barbra Streisand of It Must Have Been the Mistletoe, written in 1980.
"It's a beautiful Christmas love song," he writes, "and one that I think is close to becoming what I would call a postmodern holiday classic hit."
Which is all very well and good, but what about reactionary holiday classic hits? For all its hummability, The Pogues' Fairytale of New York (which interestingly hasn't yet infiltrated ASCAP's 25 most- performed holiday songs list of 2003) turns festive Christmas cheer on its head as it recounts a rather grimmer view of events. While the long-standing image of Christmas is of happy families sitting around a cheery fire gazing dreamily at a Christmas tree under which is gathered a collection of perfectly wrapped presents, The Pogues present an all-too-recognisable picture of imperfection, as it details people with serious social problems, their sense of pride and optimism removed, their past a blur and their future a blank.
"Fairytale of New York bursts the bubble of a perfect Christmas," says singer Pierce Turner. "The song represents a realistic view that came from the whole punk era, it stripped everything down. It's a Christmas song, for sure, but it's more than that; it's an intense message delivered under the veil of a Christmas song and, historically speaking, Christmas songs just don't do that."