It’s late in the holiday season. You’re rushing around, running errands, finalizing plans, finding those last-minute gifts, and trying to figure out how it’s almost the Winter Solstice already. You don’t have much time to feel the Christmas Spirit; you’re in a hurry, and you need a burst of energy. What do you do in this situation? Simple – you put on the 2013 “Christmas Songs” EP by Bad Religion.
The irony of a band named Bad Religion putting out a Christmas album is not lost upon anyone, least of all the band itself, an intelligent and reflective mainstream band. For the uninitiated, Bad Religion is a legendary hardcore/punk band that has been releasing densely lyrical and thrashing, pummeling music for over 40 years. Their style has been remarkably consistent for their entire career, blasting two or three-minute songs at a frenetic pace, with a scholar’s vocabulary and a true punk’s distrust of the establishment, reductive thinking, and societal malaise.
The band’s intelligence is easily traced. Lead singer/primary lyricist Greg Graffin is one of the few musicians to hold a Ph.D (in Zoology, awarded by Cornell University), not to mention one of the only musicians to use his doctorate to teach at a collegiate level. He’s lectured at both his alma maters, UCLA and Cornell, in between touring and recording in the late 2000s.
He also happens to love traditional Christmas music. He grew up singing in choirs, as evidenced by Bad Religion’s trademark vocal harmonies, and the timelessness of the arrangements of Christmas carols and hymnals inspired him and his bandmates to put their spin on some eternal pieces of music.
Bad Religion had played Christmas songs live several times, most notably at Los Angeles radio station KROQ-fm’s annual Almost Acoustic Christmas concert series. For years, they had joked about releasing a Christmas album before finally making good on their promise. The resulting 19-minute EP is both fast and insistent – punk – and a subversion of expectations – very punk. It is eight songs of Christmas standards, mostly traditional, plus “Little Drummer Boy” and “White Christmas” and a new mix of their 1993 single “American Jesus.” And while the overall project has a noticeable veneer of irony, the songs themselves are presented in earnest, even with instrumentation that is more Donner and Blitzen—German for thunder and lightning—than Dasher and Prancer. The music and the joyous feelings that the familiar songs elicit are the point, not the church-based origins of the lyrics.
In contemporary interviews, both Graffin and guitarist/band co-founder Brett Gurewitz addressed the main questions observers had about the EP. When asked about the overtly Christian songs, Graffin told Rolling Stone, “Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we’ve always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.” When asked why, both Graffin and Gurewitz said, in essence, because it was funny. And to answer the question “Why?” in a different way, just listen to the songs. The soaring chorus of “Angels We Have Heard On High,” the acapella harmonies of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” the pairings of “What Child Is This?” with “Greensleeves” and “White Christmas” with “I Wanna Be Sedated” speak for themselves.
The project may be tongue-in-cheek, but the presentation isn’t. The religious roots of the songs don’t matter, the comfort and familiarity and the melodic beauty are what’s important. And they’re just plain more fun with a propulsive backbeat and breakneck guitars. Gurewitz told NPR, “I think that all of these songs are secular. Even though they have their roots in the pulpit or in the church setting, virtually everyone who celebrates Christmas has heard these songs. And so, it’s not Bad Religion that has made them ironic. It’s kind of a secular society that’s made Christmas ironic.” In a sense, Bad Religion is championing good religion with Christmas Songs, hearkening back to a time when Christianity wasn’t merely performative. It’s non-traditionally traditional, sincere, and self-aware, and it absolutely rips.
PHOTO: By Bad Religion – https://twitter.com/epitaphrecords/status/377491759732756480/photo/1, Fair use, Link
