Evie: Come on, ring those bells! I’ll be your cheerful host tonight as we break down the “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” bracket. I’m not even bitter that I didn’t get selected for my humble little offering. Not at all.
Well, maybe a little, tiny, teensy bit surprised that my pioneering career in Christian Contemporary music wasn’t recognized for the happy and wholesome family memories I brought to countless people. But I’m not bitter. After all, bitterness doesn’t fit my wholesome and chipper image. Let’s talk for a bit about these fine selecti-
Dick Vitale: COME ON, BABY, IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR! GET SOME PASSION! GET FIRED UP! It’s flat-out scary how much talent we find in this bracket! We gotta get to the games, baby! Let me surf the crowd and get these contests rolling! Let’s take a look and find the P-T-P’ers, the prime time players and the pretenders!
I’ll start with these diaper dandies, the babies, these newcomers who haven’t paid their dues. Sure, Pentatonix have mad skills and can get up and down multiple octave scales, but this is madness, baby, and you gotta have veterans who can perform in the clutch. I’ll tell you who’s awesome, baby, with a capital A, and that’s our girl Whitney, may she rest in peace. Now there’s a veteran with crazy skills!
And look at some of the match ups! I mean, come on: The Civil Wars vs. Sixpence None the Richer in a first round match up?? It’s like we’ll look in the stands, and one half will be filled with 1990’s hipsters and the other side with 2010’s hipsters. Someone will be crying behind their gigantic glasses, baby!
We all love the big dance, let me tell you. I gotta say, though, I can’t totally approve of the selections this year. How in the world is there no Frank Sinatra? No Tony Bennett? Not to mention that nice lady I just interrupted…
Rob Halford: Old man, you’re a $@%@ idiot. Those guys didn’t even record this song! “O Come All Ye Faithful” is a completely different song! The HUGE injustice is putting me as a 16 seed. Ridiculous. I’ll prove them wrong! I play aggressive, I sing aggressive, I win aggressive!
Dick Vitale: Anyway… when it all shakes down, baby, and the last note has been sung…since I can’t find Duke in the bracket…I’m gonna have to go Old School just like me, baby, and predict that those nuns of the nativity, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles will cut down the nets at the end.
Amy Grant: I’m just hoping that there will be a bracket for Tennessee Christmas, cause, you know, I like my chances…
Jessica Simpson: I tell you who the real chicken of the sea is, it’s Gregg for not including ME in the bracket.
Burl Ives: I can’t have a Holly Jolly Christmas until you tell me how this whole bracket things is going to work!
Gregg: Ok, Burl, here’s how it will go down. Tomorrow I will listen to every match up. I will listen to each song in its entirety, and decide which one I like better. Then I will post the blow-by-blow account of how and why each won. I’ll put up a new poll with the second round match ups that come up as a result of my selections, and you all can vote again. Thanks! Tip off tomorrow!
Okay, I can’t resist anymore. I have written not one, but two blog posts about this song over the years. This bracket is silly, yes, and this song is important. I love that both can go together.
2007: http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2007/12/skills-you-cant-put-on-your-resume.html
2011: http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2011/12/o-come-emmanuel.html
Perhaps it was not as obvious to everyone as it seemed to me why this is such an important hymn for Quakers. Emmanuel is another name for Jesus, implying that of God within each of us. If each of us is “captive Israel”, that means that each of us is captive to the Empire, whether that be ancient Egypt or Caesar or the modern United States of America, or metaphorically the Empire of sin and death, of materialism and violence. This hymn reminds to rejoice because God will come to live with us, the Christ within shall free us from our captivity. It is an Advent hymn in the cycle of the Christian Church because it reminds us that we are still awaiting the birth of the Christ Child. We are still waiting to live fully in the kingdom of God. As Quakers we know experimentally that Christ has come and yet we know that we have not found Christ. Not really, not quite, not yet.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Beautiful! Thank you Robin.
I love that both silliness and importance can go together, too. Another thing I love about Quakers: at our best we try to destroy any wall between sacred and secular, because all of life conveys the essence of the grace of God.
Thanks for writing the serious piece. I will share!
What we need is a way to guess on all the games, and then rank ourselves vs. how the tournament turns out – except that would just be asking ourselves, how would Gregg vote?