BAH, DRUM-BUG – The Opening Salvo
I have recently found myself in a heated friendly with one of my fellow man bloggers regarding the classification of the “The Little Drummer Boy” as a “religious” Christmas carol. This has turned into a pretty unexpectedly heated debate. For those of you who are not familiar with this tune…feel free to check out the following link.
The song tells the story of a young boy who visits the baby Jesus shortly after our Savior’s birth. He laments the fact that he is unable to bring any sort of gift to this child King, but is compelled to give whatever he can. He proceeds to give the one gift that he can afford; an expression of worship, using his gift of tapping a rhythm out on stretched hide.
My good friend argues that this song’s inclusion on the “religious” Christmas songs list is a heretical travesty. He claims that it has no right to be included due to its apocryphal implications and lack of biblical support for the inclusion of a young drummer boy playing his drums for our Savior. He has gone so far as to claim that its inclusion is on the same level of including “Frosty the Snowman” on the same list.
While I will grant his argument that there is indeed no canonical evidence for this young percussionist ever actually being manger-side; belittling its Biblically based message is going a bit too far.
During a season of blatant commercialism and consumerism, this little boy’s reminder to give whatever we can to our Savior should be listened to. Christ desires worship from us, he demands our submission to him, and he is pleased when we can use our talents to glorify Him. This is why we include this song on the Religious Christmas songs list; not because it is an accurate retelling of an event surrounding Christ’s birth, but rather, because it is a clear reminder of what our response should be during these days leading up to the 24th of December.
We should be awed by His incarnation and death to the point where we can do nothing else but give whatever we can. This young boy’s gift was to worship the Savior of the world with his talent…lets rejoice in this as we listen to this song on our “religious Christmas” music channel.
– MJ
The LayZmen Blog 
I agree with your friend, Coach. Sorry to turn on you like that. I mean, it’s just plain false. It didn’t happen. There was no drummer boy on the scene, and we shouldn’t lead unbelievers to think about what would happen if there was…because there wasn’t.
And we really should purge all of our Christmas carols of the untruths, otherwise, we’re false witnesses, no, more like anti-Christs.
Let’s do away with “Away in a Manger”, too. I mean, there’s a pretty blaring untruth in that one: “…no crying He makes.” Yeah. Right. Baby Jesus never cried? That’s plain false. He didn’t have sin, but crying isn’t sinful. God became man, and man cries when he’s a baby in order to communicate.
I say we send “We Three Kings” back where they came from, too. I mean, EVERYbody knows there weren’t really three, exactly. It was three gifts, but the Bible doesn’t say anything about how many kings there were. And while we’re at it, they weren’t “kings”, per se, but magi, or wise men.
And what about “O Come All Ye Faithful”? Not too faithful on timelines, if you ask me. “…born this happy morning” implies not only that we know for certain was Jesus born on Dec. 25th, but that he was born in the a.m. hours. That could be completely false!
For reals, we just shouldn’t sing at all to cause people to reflect on the Christmas story, for risk of putting false ideas in people’s heads. It’s just plain dangerous, near sacrilegious, and I want no part of it. Bah Drum Bug!!