This post

• Is about Christmas songs
• Deals with the intersection of Christianity and emo music
• Was researched, but may get something wrong (let me know)
• Could make a comparison someone finds offensive, but was checked for blasphemy by both a Christian and an emo person
• Doesn't say it, but I'm agnostic or whatever...I guess, maybe

I just listened to the Bright Eyes Christmas Album. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it seems. It's emo holiday music. 

But as silly as the music and concept may sound, it's possible that Bright Eyes does more to convey the true intended meaning of nativity-themed holiday songs than any other artist. Consider the story of Christmas: A child is born to a virgin in a barn. The child is God. If anyone tried to push this today, we'd all think a group of nuts in Bethlehem were running some kind of cult or scam. But in the story, people come to worship. Members of a persecuted minority accept this child as their savior. No matter the religious connotations, this is an interesting story about some hardscrabble folks taking a leap of faith. Maybe that's why it's so often echoed and retold in modern movies, TV shows, etc., because it couldn't happen on such a scale now. New religions don't take.

Think about the Little Drummer Boy. Here is a poor boy who walks across the desert to offer all he can give to an infant who may or may not be anything more than a baby in the hay, born of hucksters. How is a well-trained, be-robed chorus singing this story in a song supposed to convey the risks, the poverty and the leaps of faith? Maybe it would work better if a sad midwesterner half whispered it through a distorted microphone channel.

Sure the music sounds a little silly, but when you're dealing with stories that involve trusting that something is more than it seems, emo is the best way to tell it. Emo thrives on making more of emotions, thoughts, events and conversations. It's paranoid, neurotic and depressed. It turns soft, forgettable feelings into loud earworms. Emo albums sell well because enough people are convinced that their emotions are somehow more--that it is as bad as it seems and so much worse. Religions gain and keep followers in part by promising that there is something more. That insignificant actions can be the hand of God at work. That an infant who has done nothing but cry and sleep in a barn in the desert can be both God and the Son of God. It's all about finding more in the ordinary, believing you are right and holding on to that.

Maybe, then, the lines in God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen about saving the world from Satan work better when an angsty 20-something grits his teeth and says them in time with his acoustic guitar. This is the same guy who has crafted song after song about seemingly short-lived relationships. 

Maybe. Maybe the whole thing is silly. Maybe Weezer will really humanize Santa's journey in a charity single next December.