Shortly after Thanksgiving, and even well before, in some cases, many radio stations make their annual switch to an all-Christmas format, offering a non-stop playlist of Christmas favorites to add a little cheer to your morning commute or trip to the shopping mall.

And, of course, once you do get to the shopping mall, once again you're serenaded

with the sounds of the season. Christmas music is truly part of the atmosphere of Christmas,

literally in the air. And maybe you've noticed this too, but we can broadly divide Christmas

music into traditional carols and popular songs. A carol is by definition typically a religious song,

and traditional Christmas carols, and by traditional I mean anything up until the mid to late

19th century, but often much older than that, almost always center around the nativity story.

Carols have come from many different times in history,, away in a manger from the 19th century.

O come all ye faithful from the 18th century? I saw three ships from the 17th century, or

God rest ye merry gentlemen from the 16th century. And there are plenty of others stretching back

even farther, of course, but there are the stuff of history books, not present-day songbooks,

and certainly not radio play.

The 19th century may have been the last great hurrah for the proper traditional Christmas Carol, because things changed in a big way as we enter the 20th century.

Recorded music came along, and commercial radio, and movies with sound.

And not only that, but also America was in the midst of recreating Christmas in its own image,

the emphasis being decreasingly on the religious celebration, and increasingly on family gatherings,

gifts and idyllic images of winter wonderlands.

And before long, Christmas carols stop being carols and become secular commercial Christmas music,

centering on winter and romance, gifts, and Christmas trees, Santa Claus and Snowmen.

And it all happened within little more than a decade.

While our canon of traditional carols that we sing today took centuries to accumulate,

a new canon of modern Christmas music, American Christmas

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