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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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OTOH in some past thread people from countries other than US indicated that religious Christmas songs are much more common there. I can concure re: Finland: We played the kids a lot of Christmas music from Spotify during the Christmas time from Finnish Christmas music lists and about half of the fare was more or less religious. I tried to Google for "most popular Christmas songs" in Finnish and got a list of songs most often sung in karaoke (a very popular fare here), with the top one being a previously-unknown-to-me, explicitly religious song by a popular pop artist made in 2014 (Google Translate gives a pretty good indication of the content), so we're not just talking about people going through old standards, here, either.

That song is actually a cover of a Swedish one which dates back to 1999, and I personally find much better. I actually heard both versions on a Finnish all-year web Christmas radio, which I'd highly recommend for quality and surprisal (like this black guy doing Christian(?) rap in Finnish), and have not encountered them on Swedish media, though an irreligious older Swedish friend I asked knew of it in principle.

(like this black guy doing Christian(?) rap in Finnish)

Yeah, he's a Christian rapper (previously unfamiliar to me, I don't really follow Finnish rap apart from a few select artists) and the song is a basically working off this Lutheran hymn.

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