The power of pop culture (Charlie Brown Christmas edition)

Just before New Year's Day it was back "home" to Shanghai, which was still in the sway of Asia's enthusiastic if wholly nonreligious Christmas mood and celebration. Through a fancy indoor gym in "Tomorrow Square," while I am using the spiffy ergometers and weight machines beneath holiday wreaths, waft the pop culture favorites of the season: Bing Crosby's White Christmas, Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad, Sleigh Ride Together by Leroy Anderson, and for an extra touch of campy surrealism, Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby.

Then the one that makes me simply stop what I am doing and listen: Christmas Time is Here, from Vince Guaraldi's famous soundtrack -- I want to say, "score" -- for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Sometimes elements of the massiest of mass culture have genuine emotional power. I think Guaraldi's soundtrack is one of those. I don't know of any other seasonal music that as effectively conveys the mixed emotions of this season: celebration, but also wistfulness. Or perhaps it affects me for specific generational reasons. I first heard this music as a teenager at Christmases in the home where I grew up, and then again through the years when bringing my own children back to that same home. Now when we gather in other places the familiar songs instantly and irresistibly reawake, in a way that only music seems able to, memories of settings, stages of life, and family members that are gone, and missed. Why I should be this song that has such an effect and not, say, Ave Maria, I don't know -- but for me it does.