My Facebook friends are almost unanimously calling for audiences to boycott Kennedy Center performances because they hate Donald Trump so much, and view his name being added to the Kennedy Center facade a just cause to…What? Destroy the arts in order to save them?
The boycott, which is taking hold because D.C.’s arts patrons are overwhelmingly wealthy, woke Democrats, is certain to have negative effect on audiences and artists. The National Symphony Orchestra, to name one boycott target, is hanging by a thread financially already. It has no other venue open to it. But the boycotters literally don’t care. Their aim is to grandstand, signal their virtue, and declare their intractable opposition to the elected President of the United States.
Artists are also engaging in this destructive and illogical protest. The Cookers, an “all-star jazz septet that will ignite the Terrace Theater stage with fire and soul” and a New York dance company canceled scheduled appearances at the Kennedy Center on New Years Eve, so as with the annual Christmas Eve jazz concert hosted by Chuck Redd that also canceled at the last minute, audiences looking forward to the event are being punished as proxies for the hated POTUS. How these protests have any impact on President Trump has yet to be explained.
The Cookers, in a statement, said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice.” Oh. Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, announced that it was canceling two performances in April. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out, but that “It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating.”
Ugh. I just made the mistake of landing on a channel showing “The Big Chill.” I lasted for about 15 minutes, but I’ve seen the film several times since 1983, when it was a “thing.”
Lacking for guest posts lately, I hereby challenge Ethics Alarms readers to watch this paean to Sixties sensibilities and activism, as a once close-knit group of sell-outs bemoan their lost idealism, or something. Then write an analysis of what the film tells us about the people whose self-righteousness metastasized into today lock-step progressive cant….or something else: that’s just my personal reaction to it now.
“I feel like I was the best version of myself when I was with all of you,” Glenn Close says, or words to that effect. Really? Being an ignorant, doctrinaire idealist hating your country and your parents’ values while advocating drug dependence and promiscuous sex was the best you ever were? Fascinating.
Because he is angry at President Trump and the Kennedy Center board for adding the President’s name to the cultural center, musician Chuck Redd cancelled the Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center that has been a tradition for more than 20 years. “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press . Redd is a drummer and vibraphone player who has presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006.
Well, jazz musicians aren’t known for their critical thinking skills or ethics acumen. Let me get this straight, Chuck: you think a fair way to punish Trump and the board for the name change is to disappoint jazz fans in the Washington area who had nothing to do with the decision. Nice.
This is one of those Christmas songs with multiple verses, like “Away in a Manger.” The first time I heard it was on one of the Christmas somg slection albums my father used to get free when he worked for Sears Roebuck in the Sixties. There were all sorts of strange selections on those records, like Mike Douglas singing “O Holy Night.” (He wasn’t bad, either.) Johnny Cash’s version of “I Heard the Bells” was on the same album as Mike, I think.
The song began as a poem by the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Do they still teach Henry’s poems in the schools? I bet not; I bet he’s a cancelled Great White Man now, and they teach Maya Angelou. Henry wrote a lot more memorable poems than Maya: “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Excelsior,” “The Song of Hiawatha,” “A Psalm of Life,” “The Village Blacksmith” “The Children’s Hour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” and “The Arrow and the Song.” among others. Like other great American artists, it is Christmas that keeps his memory flickering, at least for those who know he wrote the words to “I Heard the Bells.”
The poet’s oldest son Charles, a lieutenant in the Union Army, he was seriously wounded in November of 1863 during the Battle of New Hope Church. Longfellow had begged his only son not to enlist to fight the Rebels. When the terrible news arrived, the poet was still mourning the death of his second wife in a fire two years earlier.
It’s the day before Christmas, and all though my house, there’s no sign of Christmas, but I’ve no right to grouse…
…because it’s my choice to be solitary and miserable this season. Two days ago my adult heir gratuitously sent me a hate bomb that was the most hurtful communication I have ever received from anyone. Given that this individual lives rent free in an apartment in my house and is over 30, I expected just a teeny-weeny bit of, if not gratitude, respect. Uh, no. This was only the latest joy-extracting event this holiday season: I also just wounded my leg (the same one that put me in the hospital in July and hasn’t healed completely yet), I was fired from my oldest ethics gig (as with the unexpected attack from downstairs, the reason is obscure) and the number of administrative Swords of Damocles hanging over my head since Grace died last year have increased rather than diminished, as was my grand plan for 2025. So I’m taking pleasure in other people’s Christmas, including yours. So you better have a great one. Tonight I expect to be playing bridge with three ghosts.
Or heading to the bridge, like George Bailey.
Below is an updated and rewritten version of my earlier post about my favorite modern Christmas song, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” When I still had a professional theater company to oversee, I wrote and directed a musical revue called “An American Century Christmas.” It was staged like one of those old-fashioned TV Christmas specials, with the set decorated like a Christmas living room, and celebrity guests arriving with gifts.
I stuffed everything I loved about the seasonal entertainment into the thing: the scene in “The Homecoming” when John-Boy gets his tablets from his father; the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when George gets emotional realizing that he’s in love with Mary while talking to Sam (Hee-haw!) Wainwright on the telephone; Danny and Bing standing in for the Haines Sisters and singing “Sisters:” a reading of “The Littlest Angel;” the Peanuts kids and Snoopy decorating Charlie Brown’s sickly tree. I don’t think anyone liked that show as much as I did, but so what. It made me happy. Even remembering it now makes me happy.
The first act finale was a rousing rendition of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The song means a lot to me, and I’ll be blasting the original version tonight.
[Johnny Mathisfinally announced his retirement this year—he’s only 90. His has been one of the most recognizable, enjoyable, seductive voices in American popular music for almost 70 years. My college room mate always had his records on hand to create the proper mood for his dates. An old time crooner’s chances of being remembered rests now on whether there is a Christmas standard he can be associated with. Johnny’s best shots are “It’s Beginning to Lot Like Christmas,” and “We Need a Little Christmas” from “Mame.” He sings all the others beautifully too, but they are taken.]
I was informed by a fellow Christmas movie fan that it is almost impossible to watch the original “Miracle on 34th Street” film on streaming services or the networks. They prefer to show the various remakes, all inferior in every way. What made director-writer George Seaton‘s movie (it won him an Oscar) so superb in addition to the casting, his straight-forward style and his obvious love of Christmas is that it instantly felt perfect despite its many suspension of disbelief challenges. Why do they feel this film has to be remade? Is it the lack of color? (“Miracle on 34th Street” was one of the first movies Ted Turner colorizes, and that version is unwatchable.)
As I’ve stated here before I believed in Santa Claus until I was 12. I didn’t want to give the fantasy up: I loved magic, and my parents always tried to make the season magical. My late wife Grace and I tried to do the same with Grant, now “Samantha,” but he was a non-believer by the third grade. Is there anything more joyful to see than the look on a child’s face as he or she wakes up to find what Santa has delivered? Will anything feel that wonderful again?
“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in many ways. The movie is about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. The movie reminds us that wonderful things can happen even when they seem impossible, and that life is better when we believe that every day of our lives. I’m engaged in that right now: all of 2025 has required it. I’ve had serious injuries, successes, new projects and setbacks. My father taught me to be ready for the worst but to never to give up on the best.
One thing this film does well is to concentrate on the secular holiday without any allusions to the religious holy day, but not being obnoxious about it. “It’s a Wonderful Life” also straddles the line very cleverly: it begins in heaven, after all. All the “A Christmas Carol” films include Bob Cratchit telling his wife that Tiny Tim mused about how his disability reminded people of Jesus’s miracles at Christmastime, and that’s Dickens’ only reference to Jesus in his story.
On the offensive side is the Rankin-Bass animated “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—I can’t believe they still show that thing—when the “stormy Christmas Eve” causes Santa to decide to “cancel Christmas.” I’d say that’s above Santa’s pay grade, wouldn’t you agree? It also suggests that Christmas is only about gifts and children. (Do parents today explain that the singing snowman who narrates the story is based on, and looks like) the real person who also sings the most memorable songs? They should. Burl Ives had a fascinating life and a varied career, and those kids will probably be hearing him sing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” for the rest of theirs.
Interestingly, all of the perennial Christmas movies have been made into stage musicals of varying success—“White Christmas,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story,” “Elf”—- but “Miracle on 34th Street” flopped so badly when Meredith Willson [“The Music Man”] adapted it as “Here’s Love” on Broadway that nobody has tried again. The show included the song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” which Willson wrote long before the show was assembled. But as with all the movie remakes, the show missed Edmund Gwynn, the best Kris Kringle of them all. He was a distinguished classical actor until that movie: he complained that after the film he wasn’t allowed to get rid of his bushy white beard and was type-cast as jolly old men.
I decided to post the Companion earlier this year; I also was moved by the fact that a number of EA readers had sought out the 2024 version today. When I’ve posted it on Christmas Eve, it has lacked views for the obvious reasons.
The 2025 companion reflects some additional thoughts upon my re-watching “Miracle on 34th Street” last week—I even took notes. Mostly, I though about how important the holiday, the stories, the music, the movies and what they signify taken as a whole is to our nation, our society and our culture. Thus it was that I decided that here was a good place to re-post “Christmas, the Ethical Holiday” Besides, I need to read it myself.
Christmas: the Ethical Holiday
Benjamin Franklin recognized the importance of regularly focusing one’s attention on ethical conduct rather than the usual non-ethical goals, needs, desires and impulses that usually occupy the thoughts of even the most virtuous among us. He suggested that every morning an individual should challenge himself to do good during the day. In the 21st century psychologists call this “priming,” a form of beneficial self-brain-washing that plants the seeds of future choices.
The Christmas season operates as an effective form of mass population priming, using tradition, lore, music, poetry, ritual, literature, art and entertainment to celebrate basic ethical virtues and exemplary conduct toward other human beings. Kindness, love, forgiveness, empathy, generosity, charity, sacrifice, selflessness, respect, caring, peacefulness…all of these are part of the message of Christmas, which has become more universal and influential in its societal and behavioral importance than its religious origins could have ever accomplished alone. Secular and cultural contributions have greatly strengthened the ethical lessons of Christmas. “It’s A Wonderful Life” urges us to value our ability to enrich the lives of others, and to appreciate the way they enrich ours. “A Christmas Story” reminds us to make childhood a magical time when wishes can come true. O. Henry’s story “The Gift of the Magi” proves that it is not the value of gifts, but the love that motivates them that truly matters. Most powerful of all, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” teaches that the admirable conduct the spirit of the season can inspire need not be short-lived, and that if we use Christmas properly, as Ben Franklin used his morning exhortation to good conduct, it can make all of us better, happier, more virtuous human beings.
At this point in civilization, the religious context of Christmas almost does more harm than good. Though the day chosen to celebrate Jesus of Nazareth’s birthday has been spectacularly successful in promoting the ethical and moral ideals he taught, the idea that Christmas is indistinguishable from the religion he founded has made it the object of yearly controversy, as if celebrating Christmas is an affront to other faiths.
This is a tragedy, because every human being, regardless of religious belief, can benefit from a culture-wide exhortation to be good and to do good. “Happy Holidays!”—the bland, generic, careful greeting of those afraid to offend those who should not be offended—does nothing to spur us toward love, kindness, peace and empathy. “Merry Christmas!” does.
This is not just a religious holiday; it is the culture-wide ethical holiday, the time when everything should be aligned to remind us to take stock of our lives, think about everyone else who lives on earth with us, and to try to live for others as well as ourselves. Christians should be proud that their religion gave such a valuable gift to humanity, and non-Christians should be eager to accept that gift, with thanks.
It is foolish and self-destructive for there to be a “war on Christmas.” Charles Dickens understood. There is hardly a word about religion anywhere in his story. There doesn’t need to be. Christmas is the ethical holiday. Christians and non-Christians can celebrate it or not as they choose, but whether they do or not, the Christmas season is more important than any one religion, even the one that gives the holiday its name.
Christmas is important because it primes us to be good, be better, be more ethical, for the rest of the year. There should be nothing controversial about that.
This time of year, Ethics Alarms has many posts about Christmas music. Every year, it leads me back to the question: Did Alice Cooper write a Christmas song?
Mirroring the debate about whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie, or just a movie that takes place at Christmas time (some have credibly argued it is actually a Hanukah movie), is “No Man’s Land” by Alice Cooper a Christmas song, or just a song that is set at Christmas time?
“No Man’s Land”?
Yes, “No Man’s Land,” Track 4 from what is probably Alice Cooper’s most obscure album, “Dada,” the last of his “blackout albums,” released when he was stuck in the throes of severe alcohol and drug abuse. “Dada” is to Alice Cooper what Music from “The Elder” is to KISS, except that “Dada” is not derided nearly as much as “The Elder,” and is considered by many to be a hidden gem in Alice Cooper’s catalog.
“No Man’s Land” takes place around Christmas. Is that enough to make it a Christmas song? “Baby’s It’s Cold Outside” is considered a Christmas song and Christmas is not mentioned even as it endorses patriarchal rape culture. “Jingle Bells” is a Christmas (or Thanksgiving song) even though it does not mention Christmas, but perpetuates a culture of White Supremacy.
And, “No Man’s Land” is a love song. As I thought about Christmas love songs, of course, and Mariah Carey’s 1994 song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” came to mind. As I contemplated the lyrics of that song (which I will quote as little as possible in order to avoid banishment from our esteemed host), I became convinced that Mariah Carey stole the idea for “All I Want For Christmas Is You” from Alice Cooper’s “No Man’s Land”. I am 29% positive of it. You can judge for yourself.
By way of introduction, for those who do not want to seek out the audio on the internet, “No Man’s Land” does not have the typical feel of a Christmas song, either in form or in content. There is not a lot of pausing between verses, as you find in “Little Drummer Boy,” “White Christmas,” or practically any other Christmas song. Many of the stanzas are a single sentence that are spat out without taking a breath. This is no “Silent Night.” The stanzas are often structured like a normal song, but the rhythm and word arrangement often uneven and offbeat as one stumbles through the story.
So, yes, “No Man’s Land” is a Christmas Love Song, the Christmas Love Song that only Alice Cooper could write! Here it is:
There are quite a few versions of LeRoy Anderson’s medley “A Christmas Festival” on YouTube. The performance you usually hear had the legendary Arthur Fiedler waving the baton; Arthur was also the one who started using Anderson’s quirky, clever orchestral compositions in Pops concerts. You don’t hear Anderson’s works much any more except at Christmas, when his “Sleighride!” is unavoidable, but “Typwriter,” “The Syncopated Clock” and “Bugler’s Holiday,” among others, were all popular hits in the Fifties and Sixties.
I picked the video above because the Powerpoint reminded me of my wife, best friend, co-founder of ProEthics and indispensable partner Grace, who designed all of the presentations I used. She was proud of them and devoted so much care to making them colorful and interesting. And she asked me how the attendees of my ethics seminars liked each one of them. The sad fact was that nobody cared; the lawyers just wanted their credits. I might as well have been using a blackboard. The presentations were just a point of professionalism for us, and creative expression for her. Grace’s Powerpoints are still better than most of what you’re liable to see today. She was especially fond of the animations.
I don’t know about you, but I’m heading to the end of 2025, my third straight non-Christmas Christmas—-no tree, no wreath on the door, no music in the house, no decorations (well, I bought some red Poinsettias, but they’re all dead now) no parties, no Grace— at a near all-time low in optimism, happiness, financial security, confidence, companionship, self-esteem, trust in my profession, hope for the nation, and respect for my fellow citizens. This is unacceptable, and I am hereby inviting Cher to set me straight.
In fairness, the spirit of Christmas, and because it’s just an excellent post that interprets the song in a fresh manner that I have never encountered, here is Dwayne Zechman’s rebuttal of the criticism by me and others of the popular Christmas song written by American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. Did you know that the song was first recorded by the Trapp Family singers of “The Sound of Music” fame? That alone raises it a bit in my estimation. I also note that Dwayne, wisely does not defend the wretched lyrics in the David Bowie-Bing Crosby version. That would be impossible.
I have to take issue with all the dunking on “The Little Drummer Boy” that I’m reading here. It’s a favorite of mine, and the reason has nothing to do with the ridiculous scenario.
The reason is that this song is a microcosmic allegory of the Christian experience.
I don’t normally speak of my faith and religious beliefs here. I’m a firm believer in the notion that Truth stands on its own; it doesn’t need the support of religion in order to be true. So this post is definitely a bit of a departure for me.
“Come, they told me.” “A newborn King to see”
This is how it begins. We learn from others about the Gospel of Jesus. We are encouraged to come along on the journey.
“Our finest gifts we bring” “to lay before the King” “So to honor Him” “When we come”
We begin the journey and quickly learn that, to those who invited us on this journey, it’s a big deal. There are songs we may or may not have heard. There are responsive readings that we almost certainly don’t know. There are people here whose whole lives are dedicated to their faith and their church. Am I expected to do that too? What IS expected of me? What does Jesus actually want from me?
I’m surprised she didn’t ask if she could cook his little girl’s bunny too, like Glenn Close did in “Fatal Attraction.”
It amazed me that someone like this reads a NYT column called “The Ethicist.” She’s sounds like she’s never heard of the concept. She writes,
Last summer, I was dating a man in our weekender community outside New York City who seemed like a wonderful guy. A month after we became intimate, he told me that he was married but that he had been separated from his wife for a year. He explained that the reason he has not gotten a divorce is that she has cancer and is on his health insurance. He said she had just had surgery and was recovering. Naturally I felt compassion and said I wouldn’t push him. Eventually, I ended the relationship, because I started feeling I wasn’t getting the full story. When I mentioned our relationship to a friend who also knows him, I learned that my instincts were correct. Apparently, he is very much still with his wife, and she is healthy. I am so shocked by this. Should I contact his wife and let her know this is what he is doing and saying? Given that they are both journalists, I would think veracity would be a priority.
Translation:“I hate this lying bastard and want to hurt him, and his wife too. That’s OK, right?”
Uh. no. I haven’t even read The Ethicist’s answer, but Prof. Appiah, for all his faults and weaknesses, surely can get this one right. Let’s see…
Ethics Alarms 