Rethinking Christmas
Singer-songwriter Steve Bell explores Advent, Nativity and Epiphany with new album
While Christmas is often portrayed as a joyful time of year filled with happiness and good cheer, for many, it's a difficult season. No one knows that better than Steve Bell.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter says he looks forward to spending time with family and friends around the holidays, but in previous years has found himself "feeling vacuous, religiously" at Christmastime. In the past few years, he grew increasingly alienated, emotionally and spiritually, from the season.
"Simply put, my own childhood and later experiences of loss and grief, as well as my experience of others' loss and grief around the Christmas season has made it very difficult to connect to a season that has been relentlessly trivialized by commercial interests and by nostalgic sentimentality—both inside and outside Christian practice," Bell says.
Bell's newest project, Keening for the Dawn, in stores November 12, tackles those feelings head-on. The album is a collection of 12 songs that reflect on the older Church tradition of Christmastide, which embodies Advent, Nativity and Epiphany.
Bell, who turns 52 in November, says the first song he wrote for the project was the title track. The word "keening"—which means a plaintive, melancholic cry—came up in a conversation he was having with friends. Bell was entranced by the word, and filed it away for possible use in a future song.
In September 2011, Bell began reading a book of daily reflections that began with Advent. He read the book hoping to find something that might "help repair the gulf" he felt between himself and the Christmas season. He was surprised to find that the author was steeped in a tradition where Advent was not a joyous time focused on the coming of Christ, but is rather "a somber season of preparation that begins with a fearless inventory and renunciation of inordinate attachments for the sake of a greater love."
It's no accident, Bell points out, that the ancient Church placed the Feast of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen on December 26 and the Feast of the Holy Innocents—the massacre of the children by Herod's decree—two days later.
"When I started to really think about the story, and the broader reflections that come from attending to the older tradition of Christmastide…I rediscovered a season that bears almost no resemblance to Christmas as we know it, but that resonates deeply with what C.S. Lewis called our 'inconsolable longings,'" Bell says.
"I discovered a story full of grit, and anxiety, and vulnerability and very real danger where very real people got hurt. And most importantly, I discovered a God who came, not to wipe those things away and smooth the rough edges, but to be experientially present with us and to us in the midst of them."
Those revelations led to an outpouring of new songs that make up Keening for the Dawn. Bell recorded the album earlier this year with producers Dave Zeglinski and Murray Pulver. Many of the musicians who played on the album, including guitarist Joey Landreth, pianist Mike Janzen, bassist Gilles Fournier and drummer Daniel ROA, have appeared on Bell's previous albums.
Bell will support the release of the album with a Christmas tour November 16 to December 22 with performances happening from B.C. to southern Ontario. He hopes audiences are able to follow the album's narrative, and that it will enrich their Christmas experience.
"Spending the last year on these songs and themes has radically shifted my own posture to the season," Bell says, "and I find myself approaching [it] with something like anticipation and joy."
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