As David Bowie and Bing Crosby shared Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy on the 1977 Merrie Olde Christmas Special, it was truly a meeting of titans past and future: mahogany Bing in his reassuring cardigan, the odd Werther’s Original no doubt secreted about his person, aside the unsettling, luminescent Thin White Duke. It is this very contrast that conjures a magical encounter, every bit as significant and moving as The Fighting Temeraire. But, in stark contrast to Turner’s masterpiece (we might add ‘steam beats sail’ to rock/paper/scissors), it was very much Bing’s TV special, the future invited in by the past, to share in songs of heritage. It does not tell us how we get from one to the other but simply personifies the boundary, which in some sense must delineate the present within which we are squeezed.

Sadly, Crosby would die on the golf course within a month, pipe and slippers at the Lord’s hearth. Bowie kept on pushing boundaries for another 40 years; in truth, he was so far ahead of his time that it will still take a while to catch up with where he was when he died. Although Bowie remains a constant source of reference, his baton has nonetheless passed and we must all move on, lamenting how thinly, or not, such transformative originality might now be spread.

The rendering has caught our attention, but let’s not be distracted entirely from what Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy communicates, as we may be moved on this level too. Peace on earth we understand, but why the little drummer boy? It seems reasonable to suggest a gift of music: gold as kingship, frankincense for divinity, myrrh for humanity, and drumming for resonance, joy, to stir, a call to action, to step to a new order. Of course there’s no drummer boy in the Bible account, but it seems appropriate that someone youthful and ordinary – but at the same time emblematic of innocence and courage – should offer the Holy Family an intangible gift, one that any of us might bring, and one that gives glory to God much more frequently than any of those fine objects brought by kings. Our drummer boy also seems out of place at the stable, a figure of more recent eras and conflicts, especially when set against the ancient wisdom of the wise men from the East.

On several levels, then, when the little drummer boy is invited to greet the newborn King with his music, it embodies another transition from past to future, from old to new. Testaments and covenants. Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum. I’ll name that tune in one.

NB (source Wikipedia): Evidencing its ubiquity, and like a peculiar advent calendar, The Little Drummer Boy Challenge requires contestants to survive the Christmas countdown without hearing the song. A shopping trip to the mall suddenly becomes a perilous adventure. There’s a Last Christmas version too called Whamageddon. Might have a go at that next year. I give it 10 minutes.

Colin Davey