Pop Music : Christmas Escapism From Andy Williams

Andy Williams’ Christmas concert at the Wiltern Theatre on Saturday was an aural depiction of a Norman Rockwell painting, a fantasy of sweetness and light that probably never was and certainly isn’t anymore.

The songs touched all the guaranteed seasonal flash points--from “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” to “White Christmas,” “Blue Christmas” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”

Williams sang Christmas carols for a group of children called up from the audience, and he tossed in a collection of his ballad hits from the ‘60s. His voice was firm and clear, as blandly unassuming as ever, seemingly immune to the advancing years. The music was so sweet, so smoothly enveloping that it was easy to get caught up in its ambience of golden-haired cherubs and sugar-plum fairies. But Williams’ Christmas seems painfully unreal in these days of military mobilization and recessionary economics. Escapism is what it was really all about--a time-warp journey to a feel-good Santa Claus land. And that may be what Williams’ music has been about all along.