We are the shepherds

In theory, I totally concur with Doc's prescription for appeasing haters and avoiding yuletide burnout:select mild seasonal material at first and build your cultural repretoire slowly and carefully as you move through December. However, tonight I came home, turned on my twinkle lights, switched on my little fake fireplace, and put on my Johnny Cash album, "The Christmas Spirit."

This LP is admittedly not a mild seasonal album, but rather a fulsome and religiously-centred collection of folk songs and carols. Some of my favourite songs include "We are the shepherds," an upbeat and hopeful number featuring Cash's rich and ringing Bass; "The ballad of the harp weaver," a magical story of Christmas miracles; and the stubbornly optimistic standard, "I heard the bells on Christmas day."

Taken in its entirety, this album feels historically weighted: a pop culture artefact of sorts, whose songs reflect the ideals and dreams of an earlier America. Cash's lyrics express a deep longing for "a kinder, gentler time." With rose-tinted glasses, Cash sings about material scarcity being remedied by simple pleasures, faith, and family.

Even at the time this was produced, it was reaching back in time and memory. Surely, life was never this warm and uncomplicated.

Without demeaning this incredibly comforting album and others like it, I often have to give myself a shake when I feel their pull towards nostalgic reverie, reminding myself of the dangers of reifying the 'olden days.' Proclamations of justice and peace, trumpeting of Noel, were just as fraught and tentative in the 1960s (or 1460s, or 1860s for that matter) as they are today.

Time passes, modernity and post-modernity flourish, and the longing continues. Perhaps more than anything, the familiarity of these tropes, their incredible recurrence and undeniable complicated beauty, is in and of itself a source of comfort and joy.