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"
Scottish literature in the eighteenth century compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Burns's poetry drew upon a substantial familiarity with and knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and English literature, as well as the Scottish Makar tradition. Burns was skilled in writing not only in the Scots language but also in the Scottish English dialect of the English language. Some of his works, such as