I read in the New York Post on December 7 one of the most pseudoscientific and absurd anti-Christmas song articles that I have ever read in my entire life. Predictably, it emanated from Communist China, but I did not find the Post reporter David Landsel to blame for reporting about the topic of “dangerous” Christmas songs.
The New York Post entitled the article, “The ‘most dangerous’ Christmas song you should never listen to while driving — and why it could cause an accident.” The menacing name of this “most dangerous” song was unbelievably “Frosty The Snowman.” It was first recorded by Gene Autry in 1950 and later that same year by Jimmy Durante. Nat King Cole, Guy Lombardo, the Jackson 5 and others made subsequent recordings in the 1960s.
The article’s title immediately caught my attention for fear that I might wreck my car during Advent while listening to some Christmas music on radio Q99 FM in Roanoke, Virginia. Plus, I fully realize that calling a wrecker service can be rather expensive unless you have roadside assistance such as AAA.
Then I read the exact source of this anti-Christmas song in the article’s second and third paragraphs. For an instance I thought that this might be Lansel’s idea of a humorous joke. It sadly was not.
The devious source of this “fearsome festive news” and groundbreaking so-called “scientific discovery” was a Communist Chinese University: the South China University of Technology (SCUT). It is located in Guangzhou eighty miles northwest of Hong Kong and Macau.
The SCUT research scientists, who most likely were trying to placate the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, remarkably “discovered” that “songs with BPM (beats per minute) greater than 120 [were] guilty of encouraging dangerous driving habits.” SCUT warned that “Frosty the Snowman” could even reach a “crazy-making 172 BPM” endangering drivers not just in China but throughout the world.
God forbid (or Xi Jinping forbid) that such vehicle accidents might occur leading to such needless road deaths. However, most interestingly no differentiation of this “fearsome festive news” was ever made if “Frosty the Snowman” were sung in Mandarin Chinese or English, etc. That made me really suspicious.
The next nine most “dangerous” Christmas songs ranked from highest to lowest BPM while driving a vehicle was unbelievably “All I Want For Christmas Is You” followed by “Feliz Navidad,” “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town,” “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” and lastly “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”
What the entire Post article failed to report was that the Chinese Communist Party, which is composed of approximately 80 million people or about 5% of the 1.3 billion population, views Christianity and all other religions as a threat to their dictatorial rule. The Muslim Uyghurs in far western China are a prime example of repression, persecution and forced cultural assimilation or Sinicization.
The Chinese Communist Party, which rules the second most powerful economy in the world, especially despises U.S. soft power, which is extremely prevalent throughout the world. That is because Communist China has very little soft power, especially in Asia, and that includes Christmas songs.
China’s soft power resides in such areas as cute pandas, space technology, Confucius Institutes, humanitarian assistance, professional or cultural exchange and especially money lending or debt diplomacy in its Belt and Road Initiative, occurring in Asia, Africa and South America.
Unlike China, U.S. soft power truly emanates from a myriad of cultural and corporate sources: Hollywood, Nashville, Taylor Swift, MLB, NBA, Olympic gold medals, English, Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, Apple, Google, our hundreds of world class universities and colleges, scientific research, the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, foreign aid, Peace Corps and “global efforts to combat climate change.” And our soft power is the envy of much of the non-communist world.
That also includes the festive U.S. commercialized celebration of Christmas regardless of world religion or nefarious political ideology. In terms of soft power, the U.S. is much like a good Goliath while China is a devious, deadly and diminutive David.
Like all pre-1992 Communist-ruled countries such as the former Soviet Union, East Germany and other Eastern European countries, Communist China is destined to fail, hopefully and peacefully in the 21st century. That will eventually include Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. It is just a matter of time because all people throughout the world yearn for the freedom as expressed in the American Constitution.
One major reason that the Chinese Communist Party is against these ten “dangerous” Christmas songs is because there are now more Christians in China than Communists. The Communists rightfully fear Christianity because they are an ideological threat to Beijing’s autocratic rule.
Christianity continues to grow in China, despite the forced removal of “bright red crosses” since 2013 from the steeples of all churches throughout China and the mandatory display of a large portrait of President Xi Jinping instead of Jesus Christ and other saints inside Chinese churches regardless of denomination.
The BBC estimated in 2016 that there were “up to 100 million” Christians,” who celebrated Easter that year. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2023 that there could be as many as a low of 100 million to a high of 130 million Christians in China including children. The Chinese Communist Party views Christians as an ideological threat to their long-term rule since they view all religion as superstition or fairy tales, and especially how “Christianity could undermine the party’s [sic] authority.”
Although Communist China heavily discourages the practice of all religions, whether it may be Buddhism, Islam or Christianity, I wish President Xi Jinping a very Merry Christmas and a most joyous Epiphany. However, my real wish is for him to enjoy listening either to Judy Garland’s or Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”
– Robert L Maronic
