Loud King Wenceslas and targeted advertising.

[Chris Hobson]

I am decorating the tree in the living room and so, to get in the festive spirit, I have the telly tuned to a pop music channel playing a selection of the usual Xmas hits. Of course the music is punctuated by advertisements but not the sentimental stuff from the retail chains oh no. Instead the ads are alternating between over fifties life insurance and cremation plans. Presumably the only people listening to old Xmas pop tunes these days are those of us with one foot in the grave already.

Anyway, on to the dining room to put up some streamers and here we have a digital piano with a 280 watt six speaker sound system through which I can play my Spotify Xmas playlist which is rather more eclectic than the standard festive fare. On comes a version of Good King Wenceslas sung by a pretty standard sounding church choir. Here it gets interesting as the dialogue between Wenceslas and the page boy are sung by soloists. The King is represented by a guy with a deep powerful booming voice, think Brian Blessed on steroids. The page boy's part is sung by a soprano with nowhere near as much power. This combination made for some interesting dynamics to say the least.

 

[trophywench]

He was a nice bloke though, old KW, I've always thought, just cos he asked the little kid to stand by him, so his greater bodily frame could help protect him from the nasty weather. One of my faves cos it made a lot of sense when I was little and had never seen a manger even though people told me what one was. Or Kings, or Shepherds or that much in the way of stars really, plenty of foundries and stuff like that round where we lived and usually be in bed before it got very dark and all the street lights came on .....

 

[Chris Hobson]

I grew up close to a farm so I knew what a manger was but it was called a trough, (pronounced troff). The Carols would'nt sound quite the same with the word trough in them. There was also something called a fold yard which was a walled enclosure, roofed at on end, where livestock was kept during winter. Presumably they didn't have those in the first century.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I grew up close to a farm so I knew what a manger was but it was called a trough, (pronounced troff). The Carols would'nt sound quite the same with the word trough in them. There was also something called a fold yard which was a walled enclosure, roofed at on end, where livestock was kept during winter. Presumably they didn't have those in the first century.

Well the whole ‘stable’ thing is a bit of a Western reinvention from what I can gather - more likely to have been a simple home where the family lived upstairs, and an animal or two were overwintered on the ground floor. It’s only Luke that mentions the manger and “no room at the inn”. Everything else about oxen and crumbly stable beams is just carol writers getting carried away