I love Christmas time. I’m a sucker for all of the traditions, parties and especially the music. I love Christmas music and listen to it as much as I can. I’m a firm believer that Christmas music should only be listened to during the Christmas season. So, to that end, I start listening to Christmas music after Thanksgiving dinner through Christmas day. After that all the Christmas playlists get retired for another 11 months.
There are a lot of great Christmas carols but here are some of the nerdier ones.
Good King Wenceslas
Good King Wenceslas might be the nerdiest Christmas carol ever. It’s a great song about a king and his squire providing for the needs of a peasant. King Wenceslas and his squire trod through cold and snow in order to care for one of the least of these. Not only is King Wenceslas a good man, but it also sounds like he’d fit right into the kingdoms of Gondor, Westeros or Narnia. Democratic republics don’t make for very good fantasy fodder. No one gets excited about congressional houses legislating a war. We want to see kings riding out in front of their men, conquering other kings and kingdoms. We only see the compassion of King Wenceslas; perhaps he’s also a mighty warrior. I’m not into fanfic, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about the compassionate warrior, Wenceslas, fighting for his people and meeting their needs.
We Three Kings
We Three Kings is nerdy and a little racist. It was written in 1857 when it was acceptable to refer to anything Asian or Middle Eastern as “Oriental.” As a Japanese-America, I’m fairly offended if anyone under the age of 70 uses the word “Oriental.” Whether these kings were Asian, Middle-Eastern or Oriental, they were actually pretty nerdy. They were astronomers who spent their time looking at the stars in order to understand their world. If that’s not nerdy then I don’t know what is. I love astronomy even though I can’t understand any of the science behind it. I just like looking at pictures of faraway galaxies and nebulae. A Christmas carol that celebrates these biblical nerds and the study of the stars definitely qualifies as nerdy.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Do You Hear What I Hear? is another nerdy Christmas carol about the celestial bodies. Instead of studying those celestial bodies, though, Do You Hear What I Hear? anthropomorphizes them. There are dancing stars and whispering night winds; I’m surprised Pocahontas didn’t sing Do You Hear What I Hear? instead of Colors of the Wind. This song reminds me of That Hideous Strength, the final chapter in C.S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. In that book the heavenly bodies descend to glorify God, dancing with their tails as big as a kite. Space is inherently nerdy as are all of these Christmas carols about it.
The music is one of the best parts about Christmas. I love all of the Christmas songs, both sacred and secular. I love them even more when they help me celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior as a nerd.
What other nerdy Christmas carols will you be singing this year?
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