Christmas Festival Death Match of White People

I’m afraid that when it comes to Christmas, no one can do it quite like the Mormons and their Tabernacle Choir. On second thought, St. Olaf offers a big-time Christmas experience as well.

If there were to be a Christmas Festival Death Match of White People — and that’s exactly what’s going to happen here — these two would be evenly matched. Were this Ali vs. Frazier, the Mormons would be Ali and the Lutherans of St. Olaf the laconic Frazier.

You may not realize this, but Mormons talk trash. Granted, it’s in a different idiom than Muhammad Ali, but the spirit is the same. A Mormon, who is a true believer, will let you know. Have you ever watched the crowd at a BYU home football game? Brutal.

St. Olaf is, as all members of KPBS should know, the official college of Lake Wobegon. The understated St. Olaf Christmas Festival has been going on since 1912 and the basic idea has not changed. The students of the St. Olaf choirs join with the St. Olaf orchestra and sing Christmas music.

Celebrities, such as Celine Dion, often join the Mormons, but St. Olaf remains an offering of humble students. It’s kind of like the Three Kings and the Shepherds, the sparkly and the homespun, the Ali and the Frazier.

I said this would be the Christmas Festival Death Match of White People because it’s easy to take shots at the culture of white-bread America. Make no mistake, these two events are full of whiteness.

However, these two Christmas traditions represent the best aspects of a bygone era. Chorale singing at Christmastime was once a foregone conclusion. Christmas caroling used to be something done with friends and family. Now it is something that is consumed via streaming video or via semi-professional quartets in the lobby of a hotel.

Singing with others always creates a feeling of togetherness but it feels extra true at Christmas. On Christmas Eve in any religious service, the best moment is always an a cappella singing of Silent Night.

Everything else in the service can be miserable but those few verses of a song that everyone knows brings what we could call “the Christmas spirit.” It brings a feeling of belonging, a feeling of home, a feeling of acceptance and inclusion.

These are deep but basic feelings that we all long for. Christmas is merely the delivery system for these feelings that are missing for many of us in our daily lives. As much as I’d like to make fun of the Mormons and the Lutherans and their choruses of snowflake people, I can’t because what they are doing, what they are experiencing, is quintessential to being a member of humanity.