Christmas music the holiday in some way. Many tunes adopted into the Christmas canon fall into the generic Winter classification, as they carry no Christmas connotation at all. Others were written to celebrate other holidays and gradually came to cover the Christmas season. Borrowing from the title of the Robert Burns standard "Auld Lang Syne," Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" (1980) tells a Christmas Eve story and is now frequently played during the holiday season. Perry Como famously sang Franz Schubert's setting of "Ave Maria" in his televised Christmas special each year, including the song on "The Perry Como Christmas Album"
William Shield Auld Lang Syne" story seems to date from 1998, when John Treherne, Gateshead's Head of Schools' Music Service, uncovered an original edition of the opera "Rosina" in the Gateshead Public Library, while he was looking for new works for the town's youth orchestra. "I thought it was appropriate to look at the work of a Gateshead-born composer. I picked out "Rosina" by Shield," Treherne said. "I started to copy out the score and hummed the tune as I was writing it down. I was coming to the end when I realised the tune floating through my head was Auld Lang