"I Believe in Father Christmas"

Greg Lake

People of my generation are likely to remember the initials "ELP." It's for music, specifically a group that came to be known as "progressive" with its appeal. Today "progressive" can be shortened to "prog" as in "prog rock." 

"ELP" was most certainly progressive and they provided a backdrop for boomers. Such a catchy backdrop with the sound of something called a "sythesizer." It was quite the breakthrough then. Keyboard sounds that utilized electronic wizardry. Absolutely no novelty attached to that today. 

Is it fair to say ELP music has aged well? Because I think it has. This would show that the novelty or uniqueness of the sound (at the time) was not the main selling point. The main selling point? Well it was music and so the musical artistry was the selling point. 

Some people rained on the parade by claiming that ELP music was "pretentious." That was a meme in the age before anyone used the word "meme." I never really understood that criticism of ELP. Sophisticated music yes but not pretentious. 

It was just three guys making up the group. Only one is extant now, the drummer. 

We might remember ELP now because they gave us a significant Christmas tune. It was Greg Lake of the group who specifically gave it to us. "I Believe in Father Christmas," a title that might suggest it's a mainstream happy-theme Christmas song. 

We can have a quite legitimate debate now over whether the song was meant to be so positive and warm. Greg Lake gave us a video for this song which at the time was a rarity. Toward the end we see scenes of war destruction, bombs dropped etc. If the song was meant as a simple celebration of Christmas, why on earth is this included? 

I'll let you in on a little secret: a lot of the "deconstructionist" artistic values of the '70s were later spun by their creators as really being harmless or at least secondary. America rebounded from the deconstructionist values of the 1970s. 

A decade's traits do not begin and end on specific dates, so let's say the former zeitgeist got going in the '60s, most definitely. And then there was some carryover into the '80s. 

Not to glorify Republicans here but the election of Ronald Reagan was a turning point. We sailed forward as a much more positive nation. We did not want to wallow in the depressing thoughts about the Vietnam war any more. That was in the past. Certainly we could never forget it. But it was over. We were eager as a culture to feel some basic happiness again. Wasn't that logical to the max? 

We left behind a lot of the strident cynical messages that really did define us at one time. 

To cite examples of the transformation? One that I am fond of citing is the book "The Greatest Generation." The book was at least nominally written by Tom Brokaw. I smile as I remember a "blogger" at the time from when blogging was new and causing ripples with its effects on corporate media. This humble blogger seemed to rather state the obvious in how Brokaw most likely had little to do with the writing of the book. But his name was essential for marketing purposes. 

We have seen the same thing with Bill O'Reilly and his books. Mark Levin the famous conservative commentator known for his hair-pulling nature jumped all over O'Reilly, saying "he doesn't have time to write these books." Very clever: you'll see "co-authors" acknowledged so often (wink), the guys who do the heavy lifting. 

Heavens, I digress. But "The Greatest Generation" was like a clarion call for my generation to forget our skeptical past. I assure you my generation had serious issues with our parents. We thought they were too material in their values. Too clueless about the folly of the Vietnam war, in which incidentally about 58,000 young American men were killed directly. And beyond that number, so much suffering and further death. And, so many lives that were absolutely derailed because of boys having to deal with potential military commitments, as opposed to developing their talents for productive careers. 

Does all this depress you enough? But it had to end. We could have avoided it in the first place. But we didn't. Why? Because we are flawed human beings. The fall of Saigon happened in 1975. We 100 percent lost the war. Life indeed had to go on. 

I noticed signs that attitudes were shifting. The basketball movie "Hoosiers" had the strong message that our youth needed to follow the direction and discipline of our designated elders again. "Groundhog Day" the Bill Murray movie: for much of the movie he's in his smartass mood so representative of the boomers, their deconstructionist times. He seeks to avoid his old friend who sells insurance. What a drag when you're young, to listen to insurance salesmen! 

Murray covers "Groundhog Day" as a TV assignment. He's cynical and dejected as he sees the event as cliched and hackneyed. 

He's a different person at movie's end. He wants to buy insurance and he does his report on Groundhog Day like he truly respects and is fascinated by it! All this transformation. And the book "The Greatest Generation" absolutely lionizes the WWII generation of parents. Man, this book deposited the "generation gap" which was very real, in the dumpster. What generation gap? Well our parents had sat on their hands as it were with the Vietnam war. 

That was bad but at a certain point we have to stop dwelling on it. A truism is that we have to be inclined to be positive about the future. And in the case of the Greg Lake song "I Believe in Father Christmas," sure he intended a cynical message at the time he released it. In part it was a comment on the commercial nature of Christmas. Today? Today everything is commercial and we rather celebrate it, all us folks with our "401Ks." 

When I was a kid, people put aside money "in the bank." What a sea change we've had. 

In later years Greg Lake did the Tom Brokaw thing and expressed positive traditional values in connection with his song. It was "the thing to do." But if it was intended as such a sweet song, why the scary images of war in the last portion of the video? It was a commentary on the need for love instead of war, but that could be an edgy thought in the '60s. 

Love? Sounds kind of subversive. Greg Lake was always a commercial musician so he was likely to say whatever would help the exposure for his song. I can't blame him. And you can argue that there's never anything wrong with being positive. If only Lyndon Johnson had been programmed more that way. Vietnam was his war. And then it became Nixon's war. Crazy. 

But look how crazy we are today electing Donald Trump for the second time. History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. All we can do is pray. And we can "believe in Father Christmas." Greg Lake RIP. The synthesizer is boss. Pretentious? Well that's someone's opinion.

They were called a "supergroup," ELP

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com