How much "traditional" seasonal music that is well known by all and popular across racial and ethnic groupings is there beyond what is played today?
Station groups that do Christmas programming research the songs. Which tunes for groups that don't celebrate Christmas would pass a music test?
In the case of Jews, we have about 2.4% of the US population (approximately 6 million adults) and it is not uniformly located, with 1.9 million just in the New York metro area, or around a third of all American Jews (
https://ajpp.brandeis.edu/documents/2020/JewishPopulationDataBrief2020.pdf)
Here is a map from that fascinating source:
View attachment 5521
So, for holiday programming it might make sense in LA and NYC to explore this, but practically nowhere else.
Beyond the Jewish community, what other group has a faith or ethnic based holiday near Christmas?
I know little about Muslim practices, but my understanding is that "Ramadan prohibits eating, drinking, and sexual activities between dawn (fajr), and sunset (maghrib). Fasting is considered an act of deeply personal worship in which Muslims seek a raised level of closeness to God. It helps them acknowledge Allah as the source of all sustenance." And because Ramadan does not follow the Western calendar, it is not "synchronized" with Christmas.
(Note: this is a sensitive subject in this era and I am not appropriating the beliefs of other faiths than my own, but trying to look at this in a pure quantitative manner. But statistics can be confused with semantics all to easily and I apologize if the data seems to "shut out" anyone but Christians and those of Christian heritage)
(Second note: Until I was 15, I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which is 50% Jewish. "Heights High" had nearly 70% Jewish enrollment, so I was in a rather small minority! Still, the school did "Christmas" celebrations and simply gave time off for Hannukah. I asked a school administrator about that, and he said, "we have many beliefes, but we are all Americans. Christmas is as much about America as about religion". Interesting perspective and worth considering when discussing Christmas radio programming. )