From here on in there will increasingly be occasions where I'm forced to pause to ponder exactly what it is I'm trying to achieve with all this. You see, as time has gone on the planets have been slowly aligning to the point where the music charts and my own life as lived by me start to fuse into a single rail, making it hard to divorce objectivity from pure sentiment. 'When A Child Is Born' is the first stark example of this alignment, being as it is the soundtrack to the first Christmas where I can remember being aware beforehand that this thing called Christmas was coming and all that it entailed. To that extent, hearing the opening hums of 'When A Child Is Born' stirs my emotions as violently as being hit in the face with a claw hammer.....Action Man deep sea diver set, Evel Knievel stunt cycle, Wizard of Oz on the telly, Johnny Mathis on the radio. Sigh. Those were the days. But I'll try and keep myself in check....
The 'funny' thing about 'When A Child Is Born' though is that, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'The Power Of Love', it's a non-Christmas song that's 'become' a Christmas song via its unavoidable link to the festive season. In Frankie's case it was through its video, but although 'When A Child Is Born' has no mention of Jesus or stables, the inference is there in its very title and it's central metaphor of children being our hope for the future etc. is just the thing to warm the coldest of hearts at Yuletide. Ahem.
And to be honest, it's the very fact that it is Christmas that allows Mathis enough slack to get away with this; get away with it far more than he would had it been released in July anyway. Fair enough, the melody is a pretty one with a light and sparse arrangement that gives it room to breathe, but then it really needs all the space it can get to make way for Johnny's heavyweight handwringing; "And the walls of doubt crumble, tossed and torn. This comes to pass when a child is born."
Variations on this theme are piled on with all the subtlety and finesse of ten ton of readymix pouring out of a cement wagon, thickened all the while by Mathis's overbearing sincerity until by the time it's over it leaves me feeling like I've stuffed too much Christmas cake and chocolate. And yes I know he means well, but the spoken passage "And all of this happens because the world is waiting, waiting for one child. Black, white, yellow, no-one knows" has a faintly offensive ring to modern sensibilities. Yellow indeed!*
'When A Child Is Born' is overly sentimental with saccharine tang but I refuse to be too hard on it, simply because it does light a candle of remembrance deep inside me and well - hey - it is Christmas after all (and not forgetting the comedic touch of what must be the all-time most inappropriate B side - what's going on there Johnny)? But if somebody else wants to take a chainsaw to all this nonsense then I won't stand in their way. Just as long as the blood isn't on my hands.
* Pity the Orientals, they had a tough old time at the hands of well meaning seventies multiculturalism songwriters; we've already had 'Kung Fu Fighting' and its 'funky Chinaman' but who could also forget Blue Mink's 'Melting Pot' call for racial toleration:
"Take a pinch of white man
Wrap it up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty-bit of red Indian boy
Mm, curly Latin kinkies
Mixed with yellow Chinkies
If you lump it all together
Well, you've got a recipe for a get-along scene"
Or a recipe for a prosecution under the Race Relations Act - just how many people is that little lot going to offend now I wonder?
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