“Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol:” The Disneyland Candlelight Processional, the Commercialization of Christmas, and U.S. American Identity Formation
Location
Moore Auditorium
Start Date
20-6-2026 9:30 AM
Description
Every first weekend of December, a medley of Christmas carols reverberates across Main Street, USA in the Disneyland Resort in Orange County, California. This medley signals the beginning of the Disneyland Candlelight Processional, an annual event that recounts “the first Christmas.” Performed by a 600-piece choir, a symphonic orchestra, and a celebrity narrator on a makeshift stage in town square, the program features classic carols and holiday hymns such as “The First Noel” and “Gloria in Excelsis”. Main Street, U.S.A., Walt Disney’s vision of “a typical American town” set between 1890-1910, transforms into a Christmas fantasy boasting Mickey Mouse-shaped wreaths festooned across rooftops, a snow-lined Sleeping Beauty Castle, a 60-foot-tall Christmas tree, and other strategically designed symbols of the holiday season. This stereotypical “town”, and its subsequent holiday remodel, makes Disneyland an important site for the construction of an imagined U.S. American cultural identity that is linked to the sounds of Christmas. I examine two processes of meaning making—1) the commercialization and canonization of Christmas carols (Leigh-Choate 2020; Decker 2020) and 2) carols as catalyst for nostalgic-nationalism, a term I introduce which dissects the relationship between cultural products, nostalgia,
and national identity formation—to conduct a historical and hypertextual analysis of the Candlelight Processional as a manufactured, paradoxical fusion of the commercial and the religious (Schmidt 1995; Manning 2000; Schmalzbauer 2020). In doing so, I demonstrate how, by evoking nostalgic-nationalism through Christmas songs, Disneyland reifies the white, Christian, middle-class as the hegemonic U.S. American national identity.
Recommended Citation
Lopez, Anna Marinela, "“Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol:” The Disneyland Candlelight Processional, the Commercialization of Christmas, and U.S. American Identity Formation" (2026). Theme Park Music and Sound. 1.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2026/saturday/1
“Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol:” The Disneyland Candlelight Processional, the Commercialization of Christmas, and U.S. American Identity Formation
Moore Auditorium
Every first weekend of December, a medley of Christmas carols reverberates across Main Street, USA in the Disneyland Resort in Orange County, California. This medley signals the beginning of the Disneyland Candlelight Processional, an annual event that recounts “the first Christmas.” Performed by a 600-piece choir, a symphonic orchestra, and a celebrity narrator on a makeshift stage in town square, the program features classic carols and holiday hymns such as “The First Noel” and “Gloria in Excelsis”. Main Street, U.S.A., Walt Disney’s vision of “a typical American town” set between 1890-1910, transforms into a Christmas fantasy boasting Mickey Mouse-shaped wreaths festooned across rooftops, a snow-lined Sleeping Beauty Castle, a 60-foot-tall Christmas tree, and other strategically designed symbols of the holiday season. This stereotypical “town”, and its subsequent holiday remodel, makes Disneyland an important site for the construction of an imagined U.S. American cultural identity that is linked to the sounds of Christmas. I examine two processes of meaning making—1) the commercialization and canonization of Christmas carols (Leigh-Choate 2020; Decker 2020) and 2) carols as catalyst for nostalgic-nationalism, a term I introduce which dissects the relationship between cultural products, nostalgia,
and national identity formation—to conduct a historical and hypertextual analysis of the Candlelight Processional as a manufactured, paradoxical fusion of the commercial and the religious (Schmidt 1995; Manning 2000; Schmalzbauer 2020). In doing so, I demonstrate how, by evoking nostalgic-nationalism through Christmas songs, Disneyland reifies the white, Christian, middle-class as the hegemonic U.S. American national identity.