The Second Sense: Area Music at Christmastime

I've snarked about Christmas Creep a couple of times on this blog, but I'll be honest: I enjoy the Christmas season. And the thing I like most about it is not getting presents or watching corny Christmas specials, but the atmosphere. The weather becomes delightfully chilly (not exactly cold, here in Southern California), sparkling decorations go up everywhere, and it seems like the only time of year when mainstream society accepts the idea of benevolent magic—philosophically, if not in fact.

And the music! I know I'm not alone in having familiar Christmas music wired directly to the nostalgia centers of my brain. Religious or secular, it doesn't matter (and this is coming from someone who hasn't identified as Christian for at least twenty years). The highly specific context in which this music is usually heard is what gives it its power to enthrall: Because it is Christmas music, when we hear it we are psychologically transported to that intersection of time (winter), space (shopping malls, Grandma's house, a gingerbread village) and attitude (peace on earth and goodwill toward all) that the holiday represents. They say smell is the most emotionally charged sense, but in my experience, hearing can do just fine under the right circumstances.

Disneyland is awesome with Christmas music.

The park is awesome with Christmas in general. As I've mentioned before, it's still a newbie at Halloween, but it's had a lock on Christmas since...well, since December of 1955. Christmas parades, Christmas carolers, Christmas character costumes, Christmas versions of standard attractions. And of course, Christmas music. Practically every part of the park has at least one music loop swapped out for a Christmas-themed one at the tail end of the year. This being a post in the category of The Second Sense, it will be my very great pleasure to take you on a tour of all of them, starting outside the gates of Disneyland proper.

The Esplanade

This loop started being played in the Disneyland Esplanade during the holiday season of 2005...when the 50^th Anniversary celebration was still ongoing. This explains the one odd track out in the otherwise consistently Christmas-y playlist, that being the music for the finale unit of Walt Disney's Parade of Dreams. It's still an odd choice, since the Parade of Dreams didn't run during the Christmas season—as usual, it was back-burnered in favor of A Christmas Fantasy (which also claims a spot in the music loop). Following standard practices for the entrance areas of Disney parks, the loop provides a sort of teaser preview of both parks, naturally with a focus on the holiday-specific stuff. There are snippets of some of those aforementioned attraction overlays, but the majority of the tracks are familiar Christmas tunes recorded in styles alluding to the area themes in both parks. It's short as Disney park music loops go, clocking in at a little over half an hour, and unfortunately I can't find a link to the whole thing online. So here are a few of the more readily available tracks, so you can get a taste of the variety:

Main Street, USA

This is apparently the oldest holiday loop at Disneyland, going right back to 1971, which seems to be the year they started doing area music in general.* Like most of those very early loops, it's cobbled together from tracks off various vinyl records owned by someone working for the park (Jack Wagner?), and includes recordings from such noteworthy mid-century bandleaders as David Rose, John Gregory, and Lawrence Welk, of all people. It's not exactly what you would expect from Main Street—no trace of ragtime or early jazz—but it must have been very nostalgic for people in the Seventies. It's punctuated by music-box tunes from the collection of Rita Ford, producing a rather dreamlike feeling that goes well with window-browsing in the period setting.

Adventureland – the Jingle Cruise

Until a couple of years ago, the Christmas season was not acknowledged in Adventureland at all (except for the occasional parkwide merchandise item in the Bazaar). Then the Powers That Be came up with the Jingle Cruise, quite possibly the most half-assed—and consequently the most hilariously appropriate—holiday attraction overlay in theme park history. I'm not here to review the ride itself this time around...just to discuss its queue music loop, which is equally appropriate.

The regular queue loop for the Jungle Cruise, as I addressed in an earlier post, consists of wonderfully on-the-nose Swing Era hits referencing the tropics and travel. It would be asking too much to demand a loop made of nothing but Swing Era Christmas hits with a tropical vibe, so they've done the next best thing and created a loop of Swing Era Christmas hits plus a few Christmas songs that reference the tropics, or at least are played on the ukulele. As with the Esplanade loop, the entire loop has not been leaked online—that is the case with most of these loops, I'm afraid—so here again are a handful of tracks:

New Orleans Square – Waterfront Area

This loop consists of Dixieland style jazz arrangements of Christmas songs. What else would it be? Several of the tracks are by the Side Street Strutters, a group that actually performed in New Orleans Square for many years. The others are mostly by the Magnolia Jazzband or Lars Edegran and his Santa Claus Revelers.

(One of those groups is Norwegian. Want to guess which one? The answer might surprise you.)

I understand the Blue Bayou plays, or has played, a very similar loop, drawing upon many of the same bands and albums. But it's been many years since I ate there, never during the Christmas season, and I can't guarantee the loop is still in use.

(Interesting choice of video clips this person used, eh what?)

New Orleans Square – French Market

This, then, is something entirely different—not only from the other New Orleans Square holiday loops, but from any other holiday loop in Disneyland. From late September to early January, this restaurant is decorated to match the nearby Haunted Mansion in its Haunted Mansion Holiday identity, and the background music is changed from a peppy zydeco playlist to a melange of music from the ride, score pieces from The Nightmare Before Christmas...and score pieces from other Tim Burton movies. I am dead certain that this was done in order to fill out the loop to a reasonable length with material that blends seamlessly. Danny Elfman is Burton's go-to composer for every film he makes (except Sweeney Todd, which came with music), and of course the closest thing in tone to any Tim Burton movie is always going to be another Tim Burton movie. He's kind of predictable.

Critter Country

We can thank the Country Bears for the existence of this loop, which was compiled in order to be used as waiting area music for the Country Bear Christmas Special. I don't know if it was played in the entire land starting that same year (1984) or later, but in any case it's there now—a collection of familiar Christmas songs in a very mellow, twangy country style.

This link will take you to a YouTube playlist of each track in the loop, although for some reason it's out of order. Poke around online and you can find the correct order easily enough. The quality is a little tinny, and honestly I'm not sure if that's because the recording was made with a less-than-stellar microphone or if the tinniness is inherent to the loop. It would be in character for a rustic place like Critter Country to have substandard audio reproduction facilities, wouldn't it?

Incidentally, I am given to understand that “Blue Christmas” and “Auld Lang Syne” have been removed from the loop. I make no pretense of understanding why.

Frontierland – Main Walkway

More Christmas songs in country style here, naturally—primarily from the bluegrass group Banjomania, but you'll also hear Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and Tex Ritter in the mix (and featured below). The overall effect is a little less “semi-amateur country performer” like the Critter Country loop, and a little more “wandering cowboy with a guitar.” Some tracks include a hammered dulcimer that sounds so much like a saloon piano it's delightful.

Frontierland – Big Thunder Ranch

I debated whether or not to include this one, inasmuch as it's all but extinct: The Ranch is closing forever at the end of this year. (Ow, my heart...) But then that fact transformed into the very reason why I should include it. These winter holidays constitute the Ranch's last hurrah, and it deserves the highlight after nearly 30 years of dedicated service.

The loop itself is of course very similar to the main Frontierland music loop, with Michael Martin Murphey instead of Banjomania as the primary featured artist. It re-uses the Rogers, Autry, and Ritter performances, however...and in the same order, albeit with different material inbetween. I suppose we might consider those three songs “anchor points” for the Frontierland Christmas Season Experience.

Fantasyland

Oddly enough, Fantasyland does not have any unique Christmas music loops of its own. The Village Haus has Christmas music on tap...but it's the very same loop as Main Street. Fantasy Faire and the Courtyard make do with their normal loops, as do the individual courtyard attractions. At least the one for Storybook Land has a bit from Babes in Toyland, and that has to be worth something, right?

Of course, no discussion of Fantasyland at Christmas would be complete without a mention of It's a Small World Holiday. I've always loved how thoroughly “it's a small world” owns its corner of Fantasyland, with the visual elements of the façade and the theme tune spilling down the entire length of the Small World Promenade—possibly the most far-reaching attraction queue in the world of theme parks. And sure enough, the Promenade changes in concert with the ride for Christmas. I wouldn't call the seasonal music a loop, however—it's just the same alternation of “Jingle Bells” and “It's a Small World (After All)" that characterizes the ride overlay itself.

Mickey's Toontown

This loop is a bit odd, comprising two distinct parts. The first and by far the larger consists of more Christmas jazz and swing, with little tricks in the arrangements that make the melodies sound like they could come from the soundtrack to a classic cartoon—swooping intervals, harsh staccato, instruments with a “whining” tone. (And plenty of Glenn Miller, so I can't complain one bit.) To the best of my knowledge, none of them was literally recorded for a cartoon, so these are fortuitous finds on the part of the loop designers.

The second part is only four tracks, all of them sung by one or more characters, from the Disney Records albums The Twelve Days of Christmas and Christmas With Disney. None of them, unfortunately, is available as a convenient link. I get the feeling that this stuff was tacked on in order to stretch the loop out to a reasonable ~40-minute length...but in that case, why not grab a few more character songs, make the loop even longer, and mix things up a bit instead of having all the swing followed by all the Disney?

It's not the most elegant holiday music loop in Disneyland, in other words. But its awkwardness goes with the absolutely outrageous decorations in the area, and the Larry Clinton Orchestra cover of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” must be heard to be believed. (So you get to!)

Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland has no Christmas music loop...so far. Actually, the park has not traditionally done anything with Tomorrowland for the holidays. That's due to change this year, with possibly the most contrived excuse for a holiday special ever conceived by humans, “Seasons of the Force.” So maybe this land will get a shiny new music loop for the occasion**...though if it does, it's almost guaranteed to consist of score music from the Star Wars films. Happy Wookiee Life Day, everyone!

In Conclusion

Remember back near the beginning of this post, when I said I know I'm not the only person who gets instantly nostalgic when I hear Christmas music? I realize that there's also an entire faction of people who are the opposite way, who hate Christmas music. When you ask them why, you usually get an answer along the lines of “Because it's everywhere during the holiday season!” Which...well, all right, I'll give them that...but the rest of the year, non-Christmas music is equally ubiquitous. That's just kind of how things are in the era of satellite radio. The only reason this should bother you when it's Christmas music and not the rest of the time is if Christmas music already bothers you more than “regular” music, and therefore I reject this answer as circular reasoning. (Or affirming the consequent, or something. One of those logical fallacies.)

But maybe their problem is that they associate “Christmas music,” as a genre, with the standard playlists of shopping malls and easy-listening radio stations. And honestly, I'm not crazy about that version of Christmas music myself. I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing “Last Christmas” or “The Christmas Shoes” ever again.*** That's why I love Disneyland's take on the basic concept so much—no smarmy pop ballads, no tasteless novelty songs (there are some novelty songs here and there, but no tasteless ones), just the lovely melodies you remember from your childhood (and a few that might be brand-new to you), in a variety of musical styles depending on where you wander.

Is there room for improvement? Oh, yes! I would love it if the Fantasyland Courtyard got a Christmas loop—say, a blend of traditional tunes and Disney-specific ones, scored for light orchestra in the general area and re-scored for calliope in the area closest to King Arthur Carrousel. And I've long thought Mannheim Steamroller would sound excellent in Tomorrowland during the holidays. (Seasons of the Force can't go on forever, right?) The Esplanade loop could stand to be updated in order to reflect seasonal attractions that have been added in the last ten years.

In the meantime, though, there's plenty of good listening to go around.

* That's also the year Walt Disney World opened. This is probably not a coincidence. I imagine they planned the first round of loops for the Orlando park and then ported compatible ones back to Anaheim.

** Maybe it will already have one by the time this post goes up.

*** Especially “The Christmas Shoes.” Ye gods and little fishes, how I loathe “The Christmas Shoes.”