Different versions of the same song

On my way home from work the other day, my Pandora station played the same Christmas song three times, by three different artists.

Turns out, that ain’t nuthin’.

Want to guess how many versions of the most-recorded Christmas song are floating around out there?

Hang on to your Santa hats.

Four years ago, an analysis of a music rights database revealed 137,315 recorded versions of “Silent Night,” according to Billboard Magazine.

That’s a lot of heavenly peace.

Turns out ― and this will probably not surprise anyone who turns on their radio any time between Thanksgiving and Dec 26 ― holiday hit rewrites are kinda popular.

The second-most-recorded holiday song, "White Christmas," topped 128,000 versions.

"Jingle Bells" ― the first song broadcast from space, the internet reports ― has been recorded nearly 90,000 ways, and “The Christmas Song,” with its chestnuts on an open fire, has lived 80,000 lives since first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1946.

You’d think, once those songs reached a few thousand remakes, the world would have been ready to move on to something else.

And, yet, we keep tuning in, turning it up, and tapping our toes as we listen – and listen again – to different versions of the same holiday songs.

From the radio roll the rich voices of Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli, and Barbra Streisand, Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Buble, crooning the same holiday classics, over and over.

From Elvis and his sultry “Blue Christmas” to the breezy Beach Boys, everyone, it seems, eventually gets in on the Christmas album act.

We hear Christmas classics sung by John Denver and Neil Diamond, Mariah Carey and the Biebs.

The Jackson 5 and the Vince Guaraldi Trio. The Chipmunks and the Jingle Dogs.

Dean, Frank, Bing, and Ella. Mannheim Steamroller and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Dolly, Kenny, and George Strait. Boyz II Men, New Kids on the Block, and NSYNC.

Kenny G and Pentatonix, Jim Nabors and Da Yoopers, all playing different versions of the same songs, over and over and over.

And we keep listening, keep loving, and keep singing along, Christmas after Christmas.

Of course, artists sometimes add new songs to the holiday canon, like the earworm “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” and the inexplicable “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?),” from 1980’s “Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album.”

But it is the Silent Nights and Winter Wonderlands to which we turn again and again, year after year, happily accepting the next new artist ready to create one more version of the same song.

We like familiar.

We like belting out “Joy to the World” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and knowing almost every word.

We like knowing that, even if the tune is a little jazzier or the tempo has slowed, the song remains the same, at its heart.

It still tells the same story, still holds out the same hope, still walks with us and comforts us and offers us joy, just as it has our whole lives.

At Christmas ― not the 2021 Christmas, but the original one, way back in the stable ― God wrote a new version of the song He’d been singing since the dawn of time.

In a scrunchy little baby, He told anew the same story written over and over throughout scripture, from the ark to the cross.

I see you, He said to us.

I know you.

I love you.

In the silent night we hold so dear, our Creator gets up close and personal, stepping onto Earth to make sure we hear Him and to be what we cannot so we can be His.

I see you, He sings. I know you. And I love you.

We sway to the rhythm of His Christmastime song, leaning on its familiarity, ready to hear it again, and again, in as many ways as He’s willing to tell us.

I know you, God’s love song whispers as we navigate our days. I see you, it hums when skies turn dark. I love you, it says, in new ways and old, melodies changed and yet the same, swirling around our hearts and inviting us to sing along.

And, in us, it bursts into infinite varieties as we carry it to those around us, each listening ear and welcoming smile and open heart a new version of the same familiar song.

I see you, know you, love you, we say to one another, setting toes tapping with joy.

That’s a song worth hearing 137,000 ways, and then some.

First published in The Alpena News on Dec. 11, 2021.