Let’s do this. (For those of you unfamiliar with the format, here’s the scene: generation-defining pop star Taylor Swift is your worship pastor, and like so many worship pastors, she’s particularly enamored with her own material. It’s time for the annual Christmas program, which has been titled, unfortunately but irreversibly, “M-ERA-y Christmas.”)
All of the Girls You Loved Before (Lover)
Prologue: The lights come up, and there’s a man hunched over a desk. His name may or may not be Matthew, but he’s working on what will become Matthew 1: the genealogy of Jesus. And because Taylor’s read her feminist commentaries, when Matthew bursts into song it’s about the supposedly disreputable (get it?) women among Jesus’ ancestors: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. “Your past and mine are parallel lines,” Matthew sings to Jesus, but in a famous stable in Bethlehem, “stars all aligned and they intertwined.” Roll titles.
(Matthew does, however, decide to leave the line “but I love you more” for his friend John to use.)
Mean (Speak Now)
The Mean-ificat, as it were. The frame narrative’s over, Gabriel has done his annunciating, and Mary’s here to tell us what it all means: God will lift up the lowly (“someday I’ll be livin’ in a big ol’ city”) and tear down the mighty (“and all you’re ever gonna be is mean”). A few elderly members of your congregation roll their eyes, but “the cycle ends right now” makes a pretty good substitute for “the world is about to turn.”
Slut! (1989)
Yep, this church is up with the times, and there’s a whole scene about the slut-shaming Mary suffers in Nazareth after her pregnancy is discovered. But Mary—and, later and more reluctantly, Joseph—decides that “it might be worth it for once.” Congregational eye-rolling intensifies.
‘tis the damn season (evermore)
Joseph, like this song’s narrator, is forced by family tax obligations to return to his hometown for the holidays. This one might take some rewriting, though: there’s no room in his parents’ house, and I don’t think the Methodist church had been built yet. And I hate to break it to you, Joseph, but generally speaking you’re not the one people are going to “write books about if [you] ever make it.”
Safe & Sound (from The Hunger Games)
Every Christmas program needs a gentle but defiant lullaby, a moment of peace while “everything’s on fire.” And the “tears streaming down your face” in the first line will satisfy the you-know-the-theology-of-“Away-in-a-Manger”-is-wrong-because-Jesus-definitely-cried-because-whatever-he-did-not-assume-he-did-not-redeem crowd.
The Moment I Knew (Red)
In which Mary responds with precision to the perennial question of whether she knew.
Welcome to New York (1989)
Despite titling an entire album Fearless, Taylor has relatively few songs with the message of “don’t be afraid because things are about to get dramatically better.” So our angelic host is going to hit the dance floor and tell the shepherds about the world’s “new soundtrack”: God’s “great love” that “keeps you guessing.” (But if I were you, I would guess that you should probably make your way to Bethlehem.) After all, only an archangel could say the glory of God is “so bright, but [it’ll] never blind me.” (A centuries-old dig at Moses?)
Snow on the Beach (Midnights)
I don’t know if it snows on the beaches where the Magi are from, but that just makes it “strange but fucking beautiful”-er, right? They’re watching the sky, noticing “flecks of what could’ve been lights,” trading tales about the mythical “aurora borealis green” that Balthasar saw on his trip up north last summer. But then: a star they’ve never seen before: “Can this be a real thing? Can it?” (Featuring Lana Del Rey as the fourth wise man.)
epiphany (folklore)
It’s too obvious, but it also sounds way too much like Ghosts Upon the Earth–era Gungor to leave out. “With you I serve,” the foreign kings tell the baby Jesus, and then Mary treasures up all these things “to make some sense of what [she’s] seen.”
(Alternate selection if the keyboard synth player [who’s also responsible for turning on—and, crucially, back off—the smoke machine] is sick: gold rush.)
Getaway Car (reputation)
Okay, so it was more of a getaway camel…
Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Eva Rinaldi (CC BY-SA 2.0), modified to be more festive.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
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Me seeing the title: I refuse to read one more word about Taylor Swift right now.
Me seeing the author: nevermind, I will be reading this.
As expected, fantastic job – I was LOLing throughout.
Haha, I’m doubly honored!
gotta love a Lana Del Ray cameo; and love the reprise of this format!
This is iconic. The getaway camel got me – love your creativity!