Bob Dylan, The Little Drummer Boy

Sun, 12/12/2010 - 13:55

For some unaccountable reason Michael Jackson’s The Little Drummer Boy has always been one of my favourite Christmas songs. I make no apologies. But the video for this version of the song by Bob Dylan from last year, which I found on Francis Beckwith’s blog, is rather more poignant—in an oddly dated, beautiful, aristocratic way which is hard to explain. I like the ecstatic presence of the whirling dervish towards the end—but what does it add to, or perhaps subtract from, the Christmas story?



Comments

Pat    Mon, 13/12/2010 - 00:11   

I think it adds to the Christian message as it sings about honoring Christ and shows people honoring one another.  After all, Christ became incarnate and shouldn't His teachings do the same?  Shouldn't they be lived out versus remaining an abstraction and a nice, little feel-good Bible story? 

Andrew replied to Pat    Mon, 13/12/2010 - 08:55   

Pat, agreed. But it was the dervish who appears right at the end that intrigued me. A Sufi mystic at the end of a celebration of Jesus’ birth?

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