This cosmic Christmas playlist is inspired by an obscure religious text

If you’re already sick of the same old Christmas music you hear playing everywhere you go time of year, Arizona musician Jason Woodbury has some eclectic alternatives.

Consider this: The gospel of Matthew tells the story of the magi — three wise men who travel to see the baby Jesus. Amongst religion scholars, there's a lot of debate about who those wise men are, where they came from and why they're part of the story.

Woodbury has always been fascinated by the mystery of the magi. A while back, he came across a book by a scholar named Brent Landau. The book, “Revelation of the Magi,” is part of Landau’s attempt to weave new-age religious thought into traditional Biblical analysis.

In his research, Landau came across some obscure texts in the Vatican known as the Apocrypha, ancient writings that aren't considered canonical — meaning you're not going to find them in your standard Bible.

As Woodbury told The Show, all of this was right up his alley.

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Full conversation

JASON WOODBURY: I always grew up like, loving, you know, "Star Wars" books. And they weren't, you know, they're not, they're not official. This isn't what really happened, but it's sort of the expanded universe.

And so I like to think of this as the gospels expanded universe. The three wise men expanded universe, cinematic universe. And anyway, so I tracked down this book, "Revelation of the Magi," and it tells an expanded version of the three wise men story in which the star that they follow to Bethlehem is actually the Christ spirit itself.

And at one point they go into a cave and the star descends and becomes a glowing baby that addresses them.

SAM DINGMAN: OK, so the kind of mystical, trippier elements of this are coming into focus.

WOODBURY: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I do think that part of what makes Christmas such an exceptionally interesting time is that it's a time where a lot of things that we don't always stop to consider are considered and sort of commonplace. These notions of charity, these notions of taking care of each other, of extending goodwill to each other.

And I think that beyond that, it's situated in a time of year where kind of moving from the end of one time into another the changing of the year. And so to me, time starts to take on a kind of strange quality and it feels a little liminal.

DINGMAN: So you today, Jason, have selected five songs that, for you, get at the Christmas spirit that we're alluding to in this conversation.

WOODBURY: Yeah, the cosmic Christmas spirit is how I've been describing it in my late-night raves to anybody who will listen.

DINGMAN: Well, let's listen to the first one. This is the Seeger Sisters, "Oh, Watch the Stars."

DINGMAN: Beautiful.

WOODBURY: Yeah, I really love this one. This is from a record by The Seeger Sisters, 1957's "American Folk Songs for Christmas," which was put out by Folkways Records. And this song, you know, wasn't always really considered a Christmas song. It's a traditional Black song that I think is sourced from St. Helena island in South Carolina.

And that line that always gets me is "the stars run down at the setting of the sun," which sort of ascribes some sort of. I don't know. I know it's called anthropomorphizing when it's an animal, but I don't know what you call it when it's a celestial-pomorphizing. Whatever that is.

DINGMAN: Right.

WOODBURY: But it sort of ascribes this sort of this action of the stars, like running down to meet us. And I find that just so, so incredibly beautiful.

DINGMAN: Well, and of course, there's a direct tie back there to this idea of ... a star coming down and turning into a glowing baby who reveals the great truth of the universe and humanity.

WOODBURY: That's right.

DINGMAN: Well, let's listen to the next one, which is also star-related. This is not necessarily a traditional Christmas song, but you're gonna tell us why you think it is.

WOODBURY: Yeah.

DINGMAN: This is David Bowie, "Starman."

DINGMAN: Classic.

WOODBURY: Yeah, he's singing about a starman, some sort of savior that is going to come down. And he'd like to come and meet us, but he fears he's. He'd blow our minds, you know. And I think that it's pretty inarguable that the actual figure of Christ did sort of blow the minds of, you know, humanity.

But, you know, what tied this one to me was he also right before the impeccable guitar solo sings, "Let the children boogie."

And one of my favorite quotes from Jesus is in Matthew 18, where he talks about how we must become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. And so let the children boogie to me sounds a little bit like a holy commandment from our departed St. David Bowie.

DINGMAN: All right, well, let's. Let's get even more far out the next one. Here is "Saturn" by the Sun Ra Orchestra.

DINGMAN: I should say the full title of this record is "Sun Ra and His Solar Orchestra Visits Planet Earth."

WOODBURY: That's right.

DINGMAN: Which again, harkens back to our origin story that we've been talking about here.

WOODBURY: Yeah, and we're keeping very much with the celestial theme here. You know, before there was Christmas, there was the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was held on Dec. 17 to honor the God Saturn. And Sun Ra himself, he claimed to be from Saturn.

So in 1936 or '37, he had this sort of visionary experience where he was taken to the planet Saturn and told by the people there that the world would listen if he were to speak through music.

But while I was getting ready for this talk, I was blown away to find that not only do we've got Saturnalia, not only do we have Sun Ra claiming to be an extraterrestrial from Saturn, but the astronomer Johannes Kepler suggests that the star that the three wise men followed might well have been a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.

So Sun Ra getting in there with a pretty heavy sensibility of bringing some weirdness to Christmas.

DINGMAN: Well, we'll let Sun Ra fade into the outer solar system as we move on to the next one here. This is the band Red Red Meat with "There's a Star Above the Manger Tonight."

DINGMAN: This harmony gives me chills.

WOODBURY: Yeah, you know, this one's interesting because if you read the lyrics, "Lay down your last $20. Shepherds are dead sober whispering numbers. There's a star above the manger tonight." And also, "the devil gets wise when you start to win." So he's talking about gambling. And one thing that's interesting is that during the Roman festival of Saturnalia, gambling was permitted.

It wasn't the rest of the year. That's another thing about Christmas, right, is that we all get to take time off of our jobs. We all get to ignore our worldly responsibilities. Things that aren't normally permitted are permitted, you know. And then to have this beauty in the song, because, as you mentioned — I mean, the strings, that incredible banjo run.

There's something about that collision of the sacred and the profane. "Sweet baby Jesus, give me luck at the tables." I mean, there's something there.

DINGMAN: Well, speaking of revelry, the last one here is a song that is very difficult not to get up and move around when you hear. This is Earth, Wind and Fire, "Shining Star."

WOODBURY: Yeah, yeah. He also sings, "Born a man child of the sun, saw my work had just begun." So, you know, I think it kind of ties through. This is from the Earth, Wind and Fire album "That's the Way of the World" from 1975, which is a stone-cold classic start to finish.

And Earth, Wind and Fire, although they were, I mean, just like huge hit makers, you can see that there's definitely like a metaphysical, cosmic side to what they're doing.

And, you know, I think that in the '70s, you've kind of got this emerging notion from people like Carl Sagan who were explaining to everyday people that, like, we are made of star stuff. And this cosmic vision ... that we ourselves sort of have something in common with the cosmos, sort of pervades a lot of sort of mystical traditions.

And I think that as you see that sort of integrated back into the culture in a real interesting way, songs like this, "Shining Star," kind of become these anthems of self-actualization and self-improvement and sort of striving for being the best version of yourself that you can be. And I think that this year offers us an opportunity to focus on that notion of continual return, continual renewal, always being born, always becoming.

DINGMAN: Well, I have been speaking with Phoenix writer and musician, And — I'm gonna say it — lay theologian.

WOODBURY: Oh, no.

DINGMAN: Jason Woodbury, helping us build out a newer, more cosmically-inspired Christmas playlist. Jason, thank you.

The complete playlist