Happily, 2017’s Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas fits the bill perfectly. This captivating musical documentary charts the incredible story of how some of the most popular, omnipresent holiday songs were actually written by a gifted group of Jewish songwriters - who didn’t even celebrate Christmas. This is the perfect tonic to Star of Bethlehem as it’s not just your standard ‘talking heads’ documentary but features an entrancing dramatic framing device whereby we follow a cute Jewish-American family visiting a Chinese restaurant on Christmas day. This is an experience that will likely be familiar to plenty of Jews as neither culture celebrates Christmas and there’s a mutual, unspoken understanding that this is their ritual to be observed every December 25th. What’s interesting is that these scenes regularly burst into life as full-on musical, all-singing, all-dancing interpretations of famous holiday standards, performed by an eclectic cast of Chinese and Jewish artists. It’s something altogether different and a very entertaining way to illustrate the universal appeal of these wonderful songs (and/or pad out a pretty short, straightforward documentary).
The story is that many beloved songs, including ‘White Christmas’, ‘Silver Bells’, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and more were all written by struggling, immigrant Jews just looking to make ends meet. We get some fascinating stories about how successful composers like Irving Berlin and Mel Torme came to America in the early twentieth century, changed their names to sound less Jewish, then managed to change popular culture forever. The film shows the subtle ways that these guys (and gals!) were able to shift traditional, folksy Christmas songs towards a more contemporary pop sound. Songs like ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Chestnuts Roasting…’ shifted the focus of the holiday tune away from religious imagery to the more universal themes of love, joy, peace and the simple pleasures of winter. Thinking about it all, it makes total sense that non-Christians came up with these toe-tapping, stirring ditties about snow and snuggling by the fire with a lot less focus on Jesus and the original “reason for the season”.
It’s thought-provoking and kinda cool to listen to these songs again with ‘fresh ears’, knowing that the songwriters weren’t totally down with Christ but, as relative outsiders, were able to derive many of the same universal pleasures from the holiday season as Christians. Mel Torme’s explanation of ‘Chestnuts Roasting…’ is particularly illuminating - he apparently wrote this during a summer heatwave and had been fantasising about keeping cool.
The film demonstrates that ‘Rudolph’ - a character originally created for a department store catalogue - can totally be read as an allegory for the experience of young Jewish kids in America trying to fit in. Of course, these Jews did “go down in history” and, in their own way, changed Christmas for the better.
The theme here is one of assimilation, of how immigrant Jews had to work hard and conjure up something timeless and unforgettable to become part of the ‘American Dream’ in a culture that didn’t fully accept them. I enjoy hearing about how though it was hard for Jews, blacks, Irish etc to find jobs back in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, the entertainment industry didn’t discriminate in the same way, so many people who couldn’t catch a break managed to come through as performers. This includes Al Jolson, the man who spoke the very first words in the very first ‘talkie’ film, who was himself a Jew.
It all makes for a highly engrossing, informative, if slight documentary, only enhanced by the incredibly entertaining, expertly choreographed musical interludes. There’s just one problem - at only 56 minutes long, I’m worried this one is a bit short to properly qualify as a feature film, even though I totally love it. So, to even things up, it’s time for a bonus yuletide short documentary.
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