Category: default || By jt3y

Let's cut the figgy pudding, people. The best thing about Dec. 25 is that on Dec. 26, I won't have to listen to another danged Christmas carol for at least 11 months.

Most Christmas music is treacle. I'm sorry, but fair's fair. There are only so many bad pop singles that I can take in a day anyway. I have an even lower tolerance for pop singers warbling heartfelt interpretations of crummy tunes with insipid lyrics to the accompaniment of sleigh bells.

Yes, let's admit it: Most Christmas songs are awful, and they're not improved when some washed-up pop has-been covers them.

Think I'm wrong? Well, what Christmas song has ever been a hit outside of Christmastime? That's right, none. And before you say "Big 'duh,' no one wants to listen to Christmas music outside of Christmastime," well, nothing has prevented songs about summertime from being played on the radio all year long, has it?

Otherwise, The Beach Boys (speaking of groups that turned out execrable Christmas music, they're one of them) wouldn't have had a career at all, would they? Actually, it's hard to find a downside to that thought. But I digress.

Now, before you begin thinking that I'm a complete heartless, cruel, evil person, well, you're right --- but it's not as if I go around dumping cauldrons of boiling oil on carolers, or flipping the bird to children's choir. I'm perfectly willing to listen to traditional Christmas music sung by talented (or even untalented) amateurs. It has its place at community celebrations, or in worship services. I've even been known to sing along, and I've heard my singing described as "perfect." (Once, a vocal coach, upon hearing me sing, said, "I've never heard anyone do such a perfect rendition of a sick moose making love to an air-raid siren.")

I just can't take pretentious pop hackery masquerading as seasonal cheer. In fact, there a few Christmas songs that are instant turnoffs for me. If they come on the radio, I instantly change the station; if they're playing on the PA system in a store where I'm shopping, I will leave until they're over. I despise them that much.

James Lileks had similar thoughts in his column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune a few weeks ago. But he was much too polite, if that can be believed. I have no such constraints.

The all-time, King Kahuna of Krappy Khristmas Karols is "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," by Elmo & Patsy. I thought it was only marginally funny the first time I heard it, and I was eight or nine at the time. It's one supposedly "ironic" joke --- "Ha! Ha! Grandma's dead! And she got run over by Santa Claus!" --- is repeated endlessly by people affecting fake hick accents.

Or maybe they're not faking. Maybe they are hicks.

Either way, "Grandma" has become less and less funny with each successive playing, so that at this point, it actually sucks the funny out of other things that it's placed near. Experts indicate that it would take the entire combined writing staffs of Mad, The Onion and National Lampoon and the cast of Monty Python, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, up to five years to repair the funny deficit created by 20 years of radio airplay of "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."

Also, "Elmo & Patsy" were a real married couple who divorced after the song became a hit. All I can say is, good for 'em.

But there's no shortage of other records that are fished out of the garbage after Thanksgiving and pushed through the tinsel-flecked maw of commercial radio. No list of rotten pop Christmas records is complete, in my never-humble opinion, without including "Christmas (Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time)," by Paul McCartney.

"The choir of children sing their song. They practiced all year long. Ding dong, ding dong. Ding dong, ding dong. Ding dong, ding dong. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time." Brilliant lyrics, eh? It makes you suspect that Ringo was the talented one.

The British royal family knighted this "ding dong," which explains everything you need to know about the decline and fall of the British Empire in the second half of the 20th century.

This song debuted in 1979, and you can understand why nihilism and double-digit unemployment characterized the UK during the late '70s. People in England heard this piece of krep and said, "Well, there's no point trying to maintain a high standard of living now."


It's pretty clear that when it comes to The Beatles, the whole was more than the sum of the parts. In this early '60s, the raw sound of early Beatles records jumped out from the pretentious, over-produced sludge that many producers were shoveling into the marketplace.

So what happened? After the Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Paul McCartney started producing pretentious, over-produced sludge like "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" and Lennon's piece of trite hackery, "Happy Christmas (War is Over)."

"And so this is Christmas, for weak and for strong, for rich and the poor ones, the road is so long, and so Happy Christmas, for black and for white, for yellow and red ones, let's stop all the fight." Gee, thanks John Lennon, for taking a brave stand against war and discrimination! To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, it takes a lot of courage to speak out in public against things that everyone is already against. You've shown us all the light.


With that in mind, I reserve a special load of coal for the stockings of all of the members of "Band Aid," for inflicting "Do They Know It's Christmas?" onto the public in 1984. Why should it surprise anyone that Paul Bleedin' McCartney was involved in this travesty?

This piece of crapola also required the talents of Bananarama, Culture Club, Duran Duran, The Eurythmics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Spandau Ballet and Wham! I don't know if "Do They Know It's Christmas?" hastened the decline of their careers, but it would serve them right if it did.

Oh, but you say Band Aid generated thousands of dollars in food and medical supplies for Ethiopia? Hey, guess what? McCartney, Bob Geldof and Phil Collins, who were also involved with this project, are multi-billionaires. If they really wanted to help, they could have bought Ethiopia. Pop stars can save their false piety.

At least there's no phony charity or preachy message in "Feliz Navidad," Jose Feliciano's contribution to the worst music of the season. "I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart." Lather, rinse, repeat. Boy, you really burned the midnight oil writing those lyrics, eh, Jose?

Maybe it sounds better en espanol. Or, maybe it sounds better when it's just not trilled through the nose of Jose Feliciano. But frankly, I don't intend to find out.

Lileks suggests that any Christmas music produced after 1965 should be burned. There's something to that. If forced to listen to pop Christmas music, I enjoy Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Phil Spector's 1963 "A Christmas Gift to You!" (Anything by Phil Spector is Number One With a Bullet, as they say. Heigh-yo!)

But frankly, I'll be happy to wake up on Boxing Day and be free to turn on my radio and find it free of Christmas music. Instead, it will be nothing but right-wing talk show hosts still ranting about John Kerry two months after the election; endless commercials for colon cleansers, car dealers and erectile dysfunction pills; and burned-out "classic" rock tunes.

Come to think of it, I may start to miss the Christmas music.