STRATEGY THIRTY - SIX
The Christmas Song as Plot Devices

Some Background

It would seem that the best Christmas songs have all been written: There's nothing new to be said about chestnuts and eggnog and snowflakes and tinsel and reindeer and carols and Saint Nick. The standards have said it all. Yet, every year, come late November, new Christmas songs hit the airwaves to make their bid for public acceptance.

Despite the limitations of the subject, inventive songwriters seem to find a fresh approach, a new angle, an untried scenario, yet another way to say “It's Christmastime once more.”

Some Perennial Favorites
White Christmas	Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman	Home for the Holidays
The Christmas Song	I'll Be Home for Christmas
The Little Drummer Boy	Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
My Two Front Teeth	I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Silver Bells	Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
All I Want For Christmas Is You

Barry Manilow's 1990 yuletime entry, “Because It's Christmas,” made the charts by combining a strong melody with a statement we hadn't yet heard: “It's Christmas for all the children, and the children in us all”—an unassailable truth about the holiday's universal appeal. The song's initial success suggests it just might join the ranks of Christmas standards.

Another viable approach is the novelty song—that bit of whimsy or fantasy that encourages a producer or artist to gamble that it might generate enough airplay to make it “happen”—at least once. As we know, the offbeat may not only create a hit, it may create a standard: “(All I Want for Christmas Is) My Two Front Teeth,” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and, of course, one of the most successful songs of all time, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Hardly a season goes by without a newspaper story about the song that virtually supported its creator (Johnny Marks) for over four decades!

Prewriting Suggestions

So there are several approaches you can consider: 1) Send a message that reflects a universal truth that has somehow eluded other writers; 2) Create a novelty/fantasy situation; or 3) Come up with a distinctive title and go from there. The first role-model song used the title approach.

Christmas Song: Example No. 1 (Verse/Chorus)
“SANTICIPATION”

They've sent their letters to Santa
With a list they know by heart.
Left carrots for the reindeer,
Hung stockings above the hearth.
Children glow this Christmas Eve
Knowin' St. Nick is near.
They toss and turn through the night
Wonderin' when he'll appear
'Cause they've got

“ SANTICIPATION”
“ SANTICIPATION”
They can hardly wait for that jolly guy
With the reindeer that really fly.
Boys and girls all around the world
Have “ SANTICIPATION”tonight.

Their minds are filled with visions
Of gifts they hope to see.
Leavin' their beds to walk the halls,
They keep peekin' under the tree.
They tiptoe to their window
To watch the sky for Santa's sleigh.
They listen for the jingle bells
That say he's on his way.
'Cause they've got

(repeat chorus)
© 1989 Lyric by Laresa Forbes/Music by Kathy Durrett. Used with permission.

Comment

Drawing on a wordplay technique described in Strategy No. 9 (Strategy Nine), Laresa Forbes created a fresh title. It compresses Santa and anticipation into a portmanteau coinage that has the potential to make Webster along with palimony. Putting into practice Ira Gershwin's famous guideline “A Title/Is vital./Once you've it,/Prove it,” the writer proves her title with a plot development that's simple, direct and clear. Who could ask for anything more. The song caught the attention of a Nashville publisher and earned for the team their first songwriting contract.

Here's a viewpoint about the holiday season that is far from clicéd.

Christmas Song: Example No. 2 (AABA Variant)
IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN

IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN,
The season when goodwill endorses
The sending of holiday cards by the dozens
To nonpaying clients and obnoxious cousins.
Your hands are stained blue; your tongue tastes like dead horses.
IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN, ah yes!

IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN
When charity makes us stand taller.
The kids' Christmas list isn't hard to compute now:
They just want an Apple, but it's not a fruit now
So the wife's promised mink shrinks to cuffs and a collar.
THE RED AND GREEN SEASON—what stress!

A toast to the green of the U. S. dollar:
Your credit expands as your wallet grows smaller.

IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN.
The season of wassail and good cheer!
So hang up the mistletoe, drag in the Yule log!
You'll know that you've had enough holiday eggnog
When you're really seeing those eight tiny reindeer!
THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN, oh boy!

It's “Joy to the Worldly,” on an untuned piano,
And the “Unholy Night” of the church choir soprano!

IT'S THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN,
When grownups wish they were still children,
While loudly complaining they hate to go through it,
And yet they all know that's it's worth why we do it:
A glass of warm milk and a cookie or two–it's
The perfect reward, and amen,
For THE RED AND GREEN SEASON AGAIN.
© 1990 Nancy Louise Baxter. Used with permission.

Comment

The metonymic title, substituting the holiday's symbolic colors for the term itself–introduces a playfully irreverent collage of traditional and offbeat yuletime images. Fresh and inventive–and true: That's why we smile–in recognition.

WrapUp

So it appears that there are still new angles to find and new scenarios to write. Consider that no brain ever existed exactly like yours. What that means is that you experience Christmas differently from anyone who has ever lived. Think about what you personally feel about it and then, drawing upon a particular design device, say something that no one's said before. For example, no one yet has used a letter to Santa from a homeless child … or apostrophe to address the manger in Bethlehem … or personification to become a pine tree being chopped down or… or….

STRATEGY THIRTY - SEVEN
The Children's Market

Children's Songs and Type

Nowhere perhaps is the link between personality type and writing style more evident than in the prevalence of feeling types among children's writers. The reason's easy to see: Qualities of empathy and caring make the feeling dominant ideally suited to relate to the child with songs that teach, encourage and inspire.

The intuitive/feeler's (NF) lyric often reflects both a playful attitude and a fantasy situation. The sensate/feeler (SF) style may draw more on realistic settings along with colorful sensate details. Writers with an extraverted preference tend to enliven lyrics with gestures, movements and sound effects. Of course, every type can and does write for children and each brings its own distinctive qualities and values to the lyrics.

The Market

Writing for children has become a burgeoning field with multimedia possibilities, such as the book/cassette/video combo. Sometimes children's songs are written on assignment from book publishers or film producers. To break into the market, resourceful songwriters often generate original projects and then shop them to outlets such as Disney World, Sesame Street and Scholastic Inc.

Categories of Children's Songs

Children's songs include such general categories as lullabies (“Hush Little Baby”), sing-a-longs (“Frog Went A-Courtin'”), activity songs (“Where Is Thumb-kin”), and learning songs (“Every Day We Grow-I-O”). Because leaders in the educational field have discovered more about the learning and therapeutic values of music, publishers now seek songs for special purposes such as enhancing reading skills and enlivening math or geography lessons.

Music and the Brain

We know that listening to music activates the ancient limbic area of the brain and that the songs we learn at an early age remain deeply embedded in our memory. As lyricist Yip Harburg once observed, “Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling. But a song makes you feel a thought.” And it's that felt thought that apparently we remember the longest: “Pins and needles, needles and pins/That's where all the trouble begins.” (I still remember the words to Irving Caesar's cautionary songs that I learned in my first-grade classroom.) The following song titles reflect their diverse sources—film, TV and theater.

Some Children's Songs
Animal Crackers in My Soup	On the Good Ship Lollipop
Pins and Needles	Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho
I'm Flying	Davy Crockett
When You Wish Upon a Star	Sing, Sing a Song
Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead	Chim Chim Cher-ee
Big Rock Candy Mountain	Talk to the Animals
Whistle While You Work	Bein' Green
Hans Christian Andersen	Neverland
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Writing for Children: Some Guidelines

Target Your Age Group

To write a successful children's song requires focusing on the specific age for which it's targeted. That age range will, to a large extent, limit the content, the message and the vocabulary of the lyric. For example, a lyric vocabulary designed for seven-to-nine-year olds would be too sophisticated for the three-to-five set. Similarly, ten-year olds would require much hipper language than six-year olds.

Keep Your Language Style “Age Appropriate”

First drafts are often rendered unbelievable by phrases not yet in the vocabulary of the song's target age; for example, in a first-grade song, “… I talked the matter over with Mom.” That's not a six-year old's way of expressing that thought. Similarly, a child that age cannot make an abstract judgment such as “I know we all must be lonesome some time.”

Sound is seductive: Beware of sounds leading you into inappropriate thoughts. For example, in a nap-preparation song for the nursery school set, the rhyme agent find spawned the line, “time to unwind,” a metaphoric concept beyond the comprehension of the four-year old's literal brain.

The success of the novelty song “Supercalifragi …”, reflects the undeniable appeal of the exaggerated. But in the main, children's lyrics thrive on short words that are easy to grasp and sing (“Some day I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far…”); visual words with colors and shapes and textures (“on the sunny banks of peppermint bay”); nonsense syllables (“Chim, Chim Cher-ee”); alliteration (“… the wicked witch!”); and puns (“… Which old witch?”).

Identify the Song's Purpose

In addition to gearing your vocabulary to your target audience, have a clear idea of the song's single purpose: Is it to entertain, to produce an effect (like going to sleep), to teach a skill, for instance, numbers? Any song subject—can be treated from many angles. If writing a Halloween song, for example, you might decide: “This lyric will describe the fun of dressing up on Halloween,”or“This lyric will encourage children to trick or treat for a charitable cause,”or“This lyric will warn children of the potential danger of eating unwrapped treats before they get home.” Limit your lyric to making one point.

Narrow Your Focus

Keeping a narrow focus can be an especially hard task for right-brain dominants for whom it's natural to see and to link similarities. I remember a first draft of a song aimed to help children develop good dental habits; it was marred by playful references to elephant's teeth and vampire's teeth (unrelated to the song's practical message) which thus had to be extracted in the second draft. To safeguard against the intrusion of unrelated ideas: Write at the top of your lyric sheet a concise statement on the one point your song will make.

A good guideline: Narrow the range of the subject and develop with examples. Here's an example of that principle in a song designed to teach vowels.

Children's Song: Example No. 1 (Verse/Chorus w/Intro Verse)
SING A SONG OF VOWELS

You and I are singing
Right this very minute.
And every word we're singing
Has a vowel sound in it.
As we look at pictures
Of words that we all know,
We'll sing their special vowels
Pointing as we go.

SING A SONG OF VOWELS
Of A, E, I, O, U
SING A SONG OF VOWELS
Because it's fun to do.

First conies A:
A as in angel
A as in gate
A as in sail, and pail and plate.
A as in cape and grape and sleigh
And now we know all about A sounds.

Next comes E:
E as in eel
E as in ear
E as in leek and beak and beer.
E as in deer and tear and bee
Now we know all about E sounds.

Next comes I:
I as in pie
I as in kite
I as in ice and mice and light
I as in dime and lime and tie
Now we know about I sounds.

(repeat chorus)

Next comes O:
O as in oval
O as in toast
O as in sew, and toe, and ghost
O as in goat and boat and bow
Now we know all about O sounds.

Next comes U:
U as in moon
U as in flute
U as in two and shoe and boot
U as in pool and spool and zoo
Now we know about all about U sounds.

(repeat chorus)
© 1990 May Caffrey. Used with permission.

Comment

The song, designed by a teacher for young children, incorporates large cards placed around the room that the children can point to as they sing. It illustrates how a successful children's song limits the theme and develops by examples. The words make the lyric easy to sing as well as make their grammatical point.

The next lyric is part of a book/record project created by a successful team of children's writers.

Children's Song: Example No. 2 (Verse/Chorus w/Intro)
MAKE A FACE

You can make any face
The funnier the better
It takes a little practice
So let's try it all together.

Wanna be a monkey
Climbin' up a tree,
Reachin' for bananas?
Simply follow me:
Put your tongue inside your lip,
Then jump up and down,
Scratch you head just like a chimp
And make a squeaky sound.

MAKE A FACE, a monkey face
It's easy as can be.
Now erase it and replace it
With another magic'ly.

Wanna be a fish
Divin' in the sea?
Or swimmin' in a fish bowl?
Simply follow me:
Put your lips together
Pucker up like this.
Move 'em up and down
Now give a swishy kiss.

MAKE A FACE, a fishy face
It's easy as can be. Now erase it and replace it
With another magic'ly.

Wanna be a monster
Like creatures on TV?
Who can be the scariest?
Simply follow me:
Stretch your mouth with fingers
Into a ghoulish grin.
Give a very spooky yell
And goosebumps will begin.

MAKE A FACE, a monster face
It's easy as can be.
Now erase it and replace it
With another magic'ly.

MAKE A FACE, any face
That matches one you see.
Then erase it and replace it
With another magic'ly.
© 1991 June Rachclson-Ospa/Jody Gray. Used with permission.

Comment

“Make a Face” comes under the category of activity song. The design, with its repeated motifs of the question and instruction, makes the idea both easy to grasp and to memorize. The vocabulary is playful with sounds like fishy/swisky/ghoulish/spooky. The lyric exemplifies the ENFP personality: imaginative, outgoing, enthusiastic–and motivational. After the fun of making silly faces and sounds, a self-empowering message resonates: You can be whatever you want to be.

The next example combines two genres–writing for children and writing for the Christian market; it thus creates a product for a special market: Children's Christian songs.

Childnen's Song: Example No. 3 (AABA Variant)
A SNAKE NAMED LARUE

There once was A SNAKE NAMED LRUE
The only way he knew to get here and there
Was slither, slither.
All LaRue knew how to do was slither.

One day LaRue saw a bird,
And wondered just why in the world is it
Birds could go flying, flying.
He slithers below while they go about flying.

LaRue told the bird,
“You must truly be God's favorite creature–
To be able to fly up so high
Where no one can reach ya.

And a snake in the grass is surely
God's lowliest creature.
And God mustn't like me 'cause I only
Slither, slither.
Look how you fly while I only slither!”

The bird took LaRue in his claws.
Gently he lifted and soared through the sky:
They were flying, flying.
Before LaRue knew it, the bird had him flying.

And the bird said, “LaRue,
You were there on the ark with Noah.
If God had thought less of you,
You'd have been left on the shore.
Here in the kingdom,
There is no higher or lower.
Though I'm able to fly
It's just my way to slither, slither.
And I ‘slith’ when I fly
And you fly when you slither.”

LaRue thanked the bird for the flight,
Said goodnight and turned with delight as he
Started to slither, slither.
LaRue seemed to fly through the grass as he slithered.
There once was A SNAKE NAMED LARUE.
Words and music by George Wurzbach
© 1990 Brigit Side Music (BMI). Used with permission.

Comment

“A Snake Named LaRue” tells the tale of two archetypal animals—the snake, representative of instinct, and the bird, symbolic of inspirational thought. “LaRue” presents a mini fable—a tale that works on two levels of meaning—one literal and one symbolic. As its young listeners are enjoying the story of a snake who gets skyborne by a friendly bird, they're also absorbing concepts about their interconnection with others and their ability to transcend limitations. This musical parable, has been recorded by the Irish artist, Seamus Kennedy (in “The Kid's Album”). And, performed by George, is featured on the CD “Animal Tracks/Jamie deRoy and Friends” on Harbinger Records, whose proceeds benefit The Humane Society of New York.

WrapUp

If you feel a pull toward writing for children, be encouraged by June Rachelson-Ospa's multiple successes which include lyrics for two animated shorts “S.W.A.K.” and “Stellaluna,” and especially by the musical, “Welcome to Tourettaville,” about a young boy with Tourette syndrome, co-written with her son Jonny, which was performed at the Kennedy Center and won the 2000 Very Special Arts Playwrights Discovery Award. And now, on to another special genre: The Comedy Song.