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Was Santa Claus Jewish?
"Winter Wonderettes' at Norristown
Steve Cohen
The pianist-singer Michael Feinstein recently tried to assemble a George Gershwin Christmas cabaret show and found that George never wrote a Christmas song.
It got me thinking. Hardly any secular Christmas songs were written by anyone until the 1940s, after Gershwin's death. When the flood came, it was led by Jewish songwriters: Irving Berlin ("White Christmas"), Mel Tormé ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), Jay Livingston ("Silver Bells"), Johnny Marks ("Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer") and Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne ("Let It Snow").
I know plenty of Jews and Muslims who are fed up with hearing Christmas songs all through December. But that didn't bother those songwriters, or me.
Many of these pop songs were assembled for the 11th Hour Theatre Company's holiday-season show. This production of the 11th Hour Company presents a fictional four-girl singing group of the 1960s called The Marvelous Wonderettes. That group was invented in the 2009 off-Broadway musical of the same name, with a book by Roger Bean of the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.
This incarnation offers an inconsequential plot, set at the Harper's Hardware Holiday Party in a Midwest town. The story is so flimsy that we can forget it and just sit back and enjoy the warm spirits and superb harmonies of Kat Borrelli, Rachel Camp, Laura Catlaw and Janet Rowley as they sang "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Winter Wonderland," "Santa Baby," and more than a dozen others, including Frank Loesser's heart-tugging "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"
Yes, Frank Loesser was Jewish, too. Where would the Christmas season be without the chosen people?
It got me thinking. Hardly any secular Christmas songs were written by anyone until the 1940s, after Gershwin's death. When the flood came, it was led by Jewish songwriters: Irving Berlin ("White Christmas"), Mel Tormé ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), Jay Livingston ("Silver Bells"), Johnny Marks ("Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer") and Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne ("Let It Snow").
I know plenty of Jews and Muslims who are fed up with hearing Christmas songs all through December. But that didn't bother those songwriters, or me.
Many of these pop songs were assembled for the 11th Hour Theatre Company's holiday-season show. This production of the 11th Hour Company presents a fictional four-girl singing group of the 1960s called The Marvelous Wonderettes. That group was invented in the 2009 off-Broadway musical of the same name, with a book by Roger Bean of the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.
This incarnation offers an inconsequential plot, set at the Harper's Hardware Holiday Party in a Midwest town. The story is so flimsy that we can forget it and just sit back and enjoy the warm spirits and superb harmonies of Kat Borrelli, Rachel Camp, Laura Catlaw and Janet Rowley as they sang "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Winter Wonderland," "Santa Baby," and more than a dozen others, including Frank Loesser's heart-tugging "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"
Yes, Frank Loesser was Jewish, too. Where would the Christmas season be without the chosen people?
What, When, Where
Winter Wonderettes. Concept and book by Roger Bean; Megan Nicole O’Brien directed. 11th Hour Theatre Company production through December 30, 2012, at Theatre Horizon, 401 DeKalb St., Norristown, Pa. (267) 987-9865 or www.11thHourTheatreCompany.org.
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