Since the first week of November I have had to listen to Christmas music at work.
First, I enjoy Christmas. The lights on winter nights, the spectacle, the food, the myriad messages of hope for humanity. This year more than *ever*, we need to hold on to delight and peaceful interactions.
I even like most of the songs I’m about to savage. But incessant playing this time of year exposes all their flaws.
With rare exceptions (Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and Lindsey Stirling instrumentals), it has mostly been cheese-stuffed crap.
Some old wheezers from the Atomic Era. Some ‘newer’ pieces from the 80s & 90s. Endless variations and arrangements by modern Country & Pop. A few ostensibly Christian Praise songs (to the fury of Evangelicals, who see this dearth as more proof of the ‘War on Christmas’).
Why do I have to listen to this? Work won’t allow earbuds (for safety reasons, though we have earplugs). In our little department, we may have one tiny radio or player.
My coworkers are mostly in their mid 60s and not that technological, so I’m not sure even a cheap MP player would work for them (but I am threatening to do it, with MY music).
Even they are beginning to weary of the same twenty songs played over and over on Phoenix’s 99.9 KEZ. They’re switching half the day to another iHeartRadio-owned station that plays slightly more songs in its roster.
Until I set up my cheapass player, I am going to pick random Christmas songs to mock.
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‘I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas’, written by John Rox and sung by 10-year-old Gayla Peevey in 1953. ‘Novelty songs’ are that weird wonderful musical hinterland that can produce glorious cult hits…or things like this.
Sorry, Gayla. The kid in this song is an unmitigated little princess. I say sure, give her a live hippo. I’ll stand back & record for posterity.
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‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ by Tommie Connor and first recorded in 1952 by Jimmy Boyd. The most famous version is by the Jackson 5.
Every version has an irritating child coming very close to discovering how children end up as wards of the state after their parents kill each other.
Do look up the very adult Spike Jones version.
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‘Winter Wonderland’ in 1934 was a romantic adult interlude in a snowy landscape. By the mid 60s it had been amended to create a saccharine kids’ song. With the word ‘kiddies’.
A round of hypersonic iceballs for everyone in this song.
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‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is a true oldie published around 1780, derived from an older French song.
I enjoy the grandiosity of the gifting, but damn this gets annoying. Especially when you are listening to it with culturally illiterate people.
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‘Run Rudolph Run’ by Chuck Berry, 1959. I have two obscure problems with this, even though I generally like Chuck Berry.
The singer urges Santa to hurry, telling Rudolph to ‘take the freeway down’. Freeway culture in America set up many cultural problems, right up to the loss of vibrant disadvantaged neighborhoods and particulate poisoning. In the Interstate Era, freeways could do no wrong. We know better, now.
Kids in this song: the boy wants a rock-n-roll electric guitar, the girl wants a baby doll ‘that can cry, sleep, drink, and wet.’ So aspirational.
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‘Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’ based on a 1939 story published by impoverished ad-copy writer Robert L. May and the Montgomery Ward Co. May’s brother in law John D. Marks wrote the Christmas song version, and Gene Autry made it skyrocket.
Yes, there is a 1964 stop-motion TV special that used this song as a story base. For me, it was only redeemed by the bloody Robot Chicken parodies.
I cringe at this song for how it gleefully plasters over some huge issues obvious to every child with some form of difference.
Rudolph is ‘different’ and all the other reindeer pick on him.
Santa is a corporate manager only interested in how Rudolph’s differences can be made useful as a fog light…to Santa.
Once Rudolph is ‘useful’, *then* all the other reindeer welcome him? Yeah, right, that’s not how it works. That’s not how *any* of this works.
Watch your back, Rudolph. None of these assholes are your friends.
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In 1958, Jonny Marks crafted another Christmas hit with the rock/rockabilly ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’, with then 13-year-old Brenda Lee singing.
I’m sorry, Brenda. I’m technically one year off being a Boomer, but I’m firmly GenX in my sensibilities. Every word and rhythm in this song shriek, to me, of the very worst of Boomer culture. Appropriation. Voyeuristic cruelty. Shallowness. And they are perpetuated across every modern version.
This is not a party I would ever attend, even if invited.
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‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ was written by Gene Autry in 1946, and it earns its place here as an Evangelical Christian spiel hiding in a kids’ cutesy Christmas song.
I know lambs are generally born in spring. I know the midwinter association of Christmas was a cultural ploy to harness it to already existing celebrations.
I really don’t mind obviously Christian hymns. I dislike them being sugar-washed and aimed at children.
Plus, have you ever thought ‘Santa is really a creeper, isn’t he?’
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‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. Oh, boy.
On one read, this is a flirty song of mutual consent and seduction. On the other, there are some lines in ‘Baby’ that are *completely* chilling when viewed through modern sensibilities.
The woman says ‘No’. Many times. She’s worried what other people will think. For good reason: even today in 2020 America, most negative consequences of rape & coercion sex *fall on the woman*, or if you want to be gender neutral, the partner perceived as ‘weaker’ or more marginalized.
There’s a drink that might be drugged.
The guy sings ‘What’s the point of hurting my pride?’
That’s not someone who loves his partner. Vox has a great analysis of Baby.
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I’m sure there are more Christmas songs I’ll have to snark at.