A Dolly Parton Christmas
National Post, 25 December 2022
The country music star continues a long tradition — from the angels through Matthew — of telling stories through the gift of song
This Christmas, let’s start with the ridiculous, invite Dolly Parton to join us and conclude with the sublime.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office trial and appeal board ruled in November in defence of Christmas. More specifically, it rejected pop star Mariah Carey’s application to trademark “Queen of Christmas” as her brand.
Carey sought the power to sue grandmothers selling handcrafted ornaments if they dared use her phrase. There was an actual king at the first Christmas: Herod massacred the innocent infant boys. The “Queen of Christmas” was aiming at a different market segment.
Carey has an enormously popular Christmas song of embarrassingly thin sentiment; the fully grown woman declares that, “Santa Claus won’t make me happy with a toy on Christmas Day.” It turns out that shallow sentiment is plenty lucrative, so Carey thought to cash in.
On her way to losing her bid to claim propriety over swaddling clothes, a pop culture dispute broke out. Wasn’t Dolly Parton the real Queen of Christmas? (The Blessed Virgin Mary was never in the running.) Parton, for her part, was gracious, saying that she would happily give way to Carey.
It all brought to mind Parton’s 2020 book, “Songteller.” Country music has perfected the art of telling compact stories — consider “Three Wooden Crosses,” or “Long Black Veil,” or Parton’s heart-wrenching and heart-warming “Coat of Many Colours,” which is about her girlhood patchwork coat with mama’s love “sewed in every stitch.” The biblical imagery frames the tale of maternal love triumphing over searing poverty.
“Songteller” tells the story of “my life in lyrics,” for Parton considers herself primarily a songwriter, with some 3,000 songs to her credit. “Coat of Many Colours” was written on the back of a receipt for Porter Wagoner’s dry cleaning. Her most successful song, “I Will Always Love You,” is not about romantic love, but about her professional split with Wagoner, her mentor, all the while hoping to remain friends.
“I just go into my ‘God space,’ ” Parton explains. “Most songwriters have a zone that they go into. I call it my spiritual zone. I feel like I am closest to God when I write.… A great line will come to me, and I’ll go, ‘Hey, thank you Lord. I know that I didn’t think of that.’”
Every writer can explain how this copy, this lyric, this script was shaped. But where do the words come from? We call it inspiration, which means from the spirit. Parton — and a long tradition — would call it the breath of God.
The title got my attention, “Songteller.” Parton writes songs, which is one artistic expression of storytelling — poetry adorned by the mathematics of music.
No one speaks of “column-tellers,” but journalists call our work “stories.” We tell the stories of our time, and storytelling is intended to be in service of the truth. Sometimes grave truths, sometimes delightful truths, sometimes truths that change little, sometimes truths that change minds, sometimes change lives.
Preachers tell stories, too; stories about truths that change history. We preach the Word, and “in the beginning the Word and the Word was God.” God is the first storyteller, and the angels the first song-tellers.
A story endures to the extent that it conveys an enduring truth. That’s why so many songs are about love — desired, despairing, requited, unrequited, honoured, betrayed. Love is what most endures.
The Jews taught the world about stories that make present now what God wrote in history, which is why their greatest collection of stories opens with “In the beginning.” “Once upon a time” is the usual way to do it, but doesn’t fit when time has not yet been created.
Continue reading at the National Post.