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John Scalzi’s been running a participatory thread:
Your Christmas gift is the ability to expunge one highly annoying yet popular Christmas song from the history of the world. Which one is it?
His own choice is “Feliz Navidad.”
My reaction: I only get one? How about a couple of dozen? There’s a lot of Christmas music I’d be grateful to never hear again.
My theory about why there are so many wretchedly mediocre holiday-season recordings is that programmers have a lot of hours to fill between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a song that gets onto their playlists is a guaranteed annuity for whomever holds the rights. You get bad art when the people making it and selecting it are ignoring their own tastes, and focusing instead on what they think people whom they don’t know will like or expect. In doing that, you run the risk of producing something nobody actually likes, which describes most background Christmas music.
Then there are the songs one actively despises. For me, the top of the list has to be “Jingle Bell Rock.” I hated it the first time I heard it, when I was five or six, and time has not mellowed my feelings about it. Alas, it’s not a singularity. Here’s my deselection:
1. Jingle Bell Rock. Charmless melody, witless lyrics, and anyway I just plain hate it and always have.
2. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. See above. It’s in the #2 spot because I wasn’t forced to sing it for the Whittier Elementary School Christmas program.
3. The Cactus Christmas Tree. Never heard it? Lucky you.
4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Saccharine faux-naïf cute-kid crap.
5. The Christmas Shoes. So vile it leaves me speechless. Read the lyrics for yourself.
6. Pa-rump-pa-bleeping-pum, need I say more.
7. Feliz Navidad. I don’t know. Maybe Jose Feliciano accidentally released the rehearsal version with the placeholder lyrics.
8. The Rebel Jesus, by Jackson Browne. Fatuous lyrics paired with the same tune Jackson Browne uses for everything.
9. All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth). Celebrating the joy of of childhood speech impediments. I hear Spike Jones did a funny version of this one, but I’ve never heard it.
10. Blue Christmas. Maudlin and dreary, an exercise in self-pity.
11. I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. Expresses the lugubrious wish that you be cursed with disastrous weather during the citrus harvest. I’ve never been able to see why a snowed-upon Christmas should be more real than a rainy one.
12. Sleigh Ride/Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!/Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland. Apparently sleighbells, fireplaces, and bad weather have an aphrodisiac effect on Northeasterners, who for some reason are then obliged to be archly coy about it. Non-despised recordings that confirm the aphrodisiac effects of snow include Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Christmas to Remember, and Blame It on the Mistletoe.
13. The Christmas Song. Cheap sentiment and false nostalgia, brought to you by crooning lounge lizards. How many of us actually miss sleigh bells, or roasting chestnuts on an open fire? And where do they get off calling it the Christmas song? The only good thing about this one is that kids get mixed up and sing “Jack Frost roasting on an open fire.”
14. Silver Bells. I live in a city. Do you live in a city? Have you ever heard these supposed bells? No? I haven’t either. So what the hell is this guy on about?
15. Jingle Bells. More sleighs, more snow, no romance. No one over ten should have to deal with this song.
16. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. Perky, shallow. If a year came in which nobody played it, would you notice?
17. The Apocryphal Acts of Saint Nicholas, including: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer/Up on the Housetop/Here Comes Santa Claus/Must Be Santa/Jolly Old St. Nicholas/If It Doesn’t Snow on Christmas/Little Sandy Sleighfoot/Frosty the Snowman. What becomes of novelty songs that cease to be novel? If they’re holiday-themed, they get played anyway. These are all the sort of thing adults think children ought to like. The catalogues of gender-stereotyped toys only enhance the effect.
18. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Unless sung by Bruce Springsteen.
19. Santa Baby. Unless sung by Eartha Kitt.
20. O Christmas Tree. Nice tune. Somebody ought to write lyrics for it that don’t suck.
Holiday recordings I don’t loathe:
1. A bunch of stuff by Sidney Carter, John Tams, the Waverly Consort, Joculatores Uppsaliensis, the West Gallery Music Association, and others of their ilk, which I’m not going to list separately.
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. I’ll even put up with the bleeping Little Drummer Boy.
3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies.
4. A Fairy Tale of New York, the Pogues with Kirsty McColl.
5. The St. Stephen’s Day Murders, by Elvis Costello. Chorus:
There’ll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias
Mixed up with that drink made from girders
And it’s all we’ve got left as you draw your last breath
And it’s nice for the kids as you’ve finally got rid of them
In the St Stephen’s Day Murders.
6. Christmas in Hollis by Run-D.M.C. Not the sort of music I normally listen to, but lord knows it’s not coy. It is, however, the only holiday song I know of where Santa brings money for Christmas.
7. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. Patently insane. I’d hate it if it got played a lot.
What do I really like? Adeste Fideles. Joy to the World. Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Angels We Have Heard on High. Silent Night. Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending. Gaudete. O Holy Night. We Three Kings. The Coventry Carol. As Lately We Watched. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Nowell Sing Nowell. Dona Nobis Pacem. You know—the usual.
Addendum: The only English lyrics to the “O Tannenbaum” tune I’ve ever liked were an unofficial version of “O Maryland My Maryland,” the MD state song. Oddly enough, this was sung to me by Rob Hansen, a Welshman living in London. I just now found a version of it online. Like “The St. Stephen’s Day Murders,” the rhymes and meter work just fine—if you get the accent right:
Oh MarylandWe’ve got some hills, we’ve got some trees,
We sing in four-part harmonies;
There’s shopping malls and city halls,
And cats and dogs and ponds with frogs;
But none of us has ever meant
To overthrow the government.
From Baltimore to Hagerstown,
Just take your car and drive around.We’re near the nation’s capital,
But we are not stuck up at all,
So take a stand and shake the hand
Of every crab in Maryland.
We touch four states and several bays,
The highways mostly run both ways,
We hope you come and say hello
And maybe stop and spend some dough.When I was ten my family
Moved here from West Virginia;
I went to school in Annapolis,
I studied Greek and calculus,
And now I live in Baltimore
And that’s what Maryland is for.
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland,
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland.I have a dog whose name is Jack,
I threw a stick, he brought it back.
My sister had a cat, I think,
My mother had a kitchen sink.
My father was a decent man,
And we all lived in Maryland.
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland,
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland.Our nights are dark, our days are fair,
We’re right next door to Delaware.
Our song before was full of gore
But we heard the Union won the war.
We’re sorry if we made you mad,
It was the only song we had.
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland,
Oh Maryland, oh Maryland.
Great. Now I have at least three of those as competing ear worms. Merry Xmas to you!
Have a holly jolly. I've got a patch for that I'll post to Particles.
Steeleye Span did great versions of some Christmas music, too. I like their "Boar's Head Carol" even though it's not identifiably a Christmas carol; the Latin is a nice touch.
Pthththththbt!
I have an irony-free love of Christmas music. Give me Helen Reddy, Johnny Mathis and Burl Ives. As long as it isn't a deliberate oddity, like something from Tiny Tim or Leonard Nimoy, I'm for it. Especially ... Winter Wonderland.
Go Frosty the Snowman!
I will admit that I don't recognize some of the titles on your hate list, though.
But I would eliminate "Grandma Got Run Over By a Raindeer."
Merry Christmas, Teresa. Much joy to you and yours, and thanks for all the terrific books.
Well, I like Christmas music. Most of it, really, though I agree some versions are awfully sappy. But there are often nice versions of even the sappiest songs. Which is why I got into Rivka's Christmas Music Swap with a few of the otter fans, and was quite happy with the result. I was particularly pleased to have introduced Kate Schaefer to "I Want A Hippopatamus for Christmas" which was on one of the swap disks I got. Kate had never heard it before and I was mumbling along to the lyrics as we picked up after the Christmas tea. Kate eventually got a quizical sort of look and allowed as how she quite liked it. Possibly due to the reinforcement of having been watching the hippos at the zoo with Terry and Maia and Hal just the day before, I have been humming it periodically ever since.
I was also amused to find that of the folks in my swap, every single one put a version of "Gaudete" on their mix, though not one was the Steeleye Span version, and I don't think there was any duplication, either.
A few years ago I discovered that the lyric to "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" has two versions - the older (I presume) which goes "Some day soon, we all will be together, if the fates allow; until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow" which I hadn't previously heard, and the newer, which goes "hang a star upon the highest bough," instead. The difference was transformative. All the lyrics around the one line rearranged themselves in my head, and I realized that it's not a single-note, cheerful family-and-sentiment song at all, but rather animated by the loneliness of separation and the whole ethos of World War II. I like the song much better since finding that kernel of sadness playing against he plucky, contrived cheer of the rest of the lyric.
As for "The Little Drummer Boy," even the most godawful version makes me cry. Every. Single. Time. I cannot possibly sing it, because my voice breaks. You get to the passage that begins, "I am a poor boy, too," and I dissolve. It's something about the humiliation of poverty, and the gift of grace given to those who give the best they have despite being society's untouchables that gets me right where I live. I don't know of a song that catches the meaning of Christmas, in the Christian sense, better than that short verse. Your mileage will obviously vary.
I'm pretty tolerant of bad Christmas music, but the one that really sets my teeth on edge is the barking dog version of Jingle Bells, which was featured in a particle and gave me an earworm. There's a special circle of hell filled with nippy little chihuahuas and pekes waiting for the folks responsible for that atrocity.
Did anybody else hear the Marketplace piece yesterday where they interviewed the guy who wrote The Waitresses' hit Christmas Wrapping? I actually like that song, but it was a real downer to discover the reason for the interview - it was released twenty years ago. Twenty (20) years. I suddenly feel old, and alarmingly in the bullseye demo for an NPR business program.
Oh well - happy holidays everyone! And do try to enjoy the Christmas music - it's much easier that way.
Re #20: do the German lyrics suck, in your opinion? I personally like them better than the standard English version, though it's still far from my favorite carol (or even my favorite German carol).
Of course, the same tune has several alternate lyrics, including Keep the Red Flag Flying--which is sappy in its own way, but really de-fangs the carol for me. Particularly in store muzak. I mean, you'd think a retail establishment wouldn't want to promote communism...
And then there's:
Oh woe is me,
Oh woe is me,
Oh once I had a hamster tree.
But it was eaten by a newt.
Now I have no more cuddly fruit.
Oh woe is me,
Oh woe is me,
Oh once I had a hamster tree.
On the recommendation side, I think most of my favorite carols are at least 144 years old. Personent Hodie, The holly and the ivy, Nova! Nova!, While shepherds watched their flocks by night, Ding! dong! merrily on high...yum.
Time to break out the Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols tomorrow, to make up for not being able to get home on time because of flight delays.
The "muddle through somehow" lyrics of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were the lyrics used in the movie _Meet Me in St. Louis._ I've always assumed that the sappier lyrics was what they used in the sheet music, but I don't know that.
It might be vaguely off-topic to point out that besides the German lyrics, there is at least one other set of lyrics to "O Christmas Tree." Maryland uses the tune for its state song. I don't know if it meets the criterion of not sucking though...
9 stanzas and IMHO, overblown
http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyricsco.html
John-
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was written for Meet Me In St. Louis so I would have to think its lyrics are canonical. I haven't seen the film, but it's WW II vintage, so I would think a certain WW II sensibility would inform it, and the lyrics to the songs for it.
We are not as afflicted as you people (or the British, or the Irish, according to the Other Anna) by Christmas Carols. Though all of us have had to perfom "Tu scendi dalle stelle" in our childhood, preferably lined up in front of the school's, er, crib?, being therefore scarred for life by it. Anna informs me that it may well be the oldest Christmas Carol, and S. Francis is credited with writing it (as well as with inventing the crib itself. He was this artsy type, S. Francis). Thankfully, I am spared the chore of intoning it here. It will take a long while for me to shake it, though. Ack.
goes away muttering: (Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun...)
Since I'm googlin': here's a link to a 2001 NPR piece on James Taylor's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Apparently the 'hang a shining star' line was added by/for Frank Sinatra's version, in the '50s. And apparently James Taylor agrees with me about the preferability of the original line. So much the better for James Taylor...
I don't hate any of them if played/heard only once. But OMG, the overwhelming repetition, on every radio station, store audio system, sappy made-for-tv movie, etc., ad nauseam, until my teeth grind and I want only to pull the plug that would stop all of it.
Bah, humbug.
John Chu - I think that the German lyrics to O Christmas Tree / O Tannenbaum klingt besser, but IMHO they're still pretty silly.
Ulrika - I've actually been singing little chunks of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to myself for the last several days. It's an earworm I can live with.
Anna - The Germans like their Christmas music, too. The German version of Silent Night always moves me more than the English - even before I could understand any of the German.
I really really don't like Christmas music. To me the worst of all is Hark the Herald Angels, mostly because it is the toughest to get out of my head. I'd quite happily lose the whole lot of them. (And by the way have a Merry Christmas, those for whom it is an appropriate wish.)
Oh, and Anna, I think manger or crèche are the English words you're looking for...
Or "nativity scene."
If you're in the mood for holiday music that doesn't suck and isn't something you've heard seven billion times before, check out Soma FM's Xmas in Frisco. Not for the easily dismayed, but it's great for putting me in my preferred version of the spirit of the season.
For those who haven't seen _Meet Me in St. Louis_, you should know that the context is that the family is planning to move from their beloved St. Louis home -- I should say is being moved by their father. Everyone else is unhappy, especially the youngest girl, played by Margaret O'Brien, who's around 10. Teenage sister Judy Garland sings the song while little sister sobs quietly. And then the little girl --
You know, it's on Turner Classic Movies at 10 (ET, at least) tonight (12/24). You should check it out.
"Six White Boomers". Hands down, no further play. Oh, if only I could.
I’ve never been able to see why a snowed-upon Christmas should be more real than a rainy one.
Because it is not in the South Pacific when the song was new.
Once, many years ago, while looking for Catholic church at midnight one Christmas Eve in Texas, on the only radio station I could find the disk jockey had apparently stepped out for a cup of holiday cheer after putting on a tape of eighteen different versions of The Little Drummer Boy, back to back.
It was brutal.
So I came up with this:
Mary snarled at me,
Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum
"I had the kid asleep,"
Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum
"You woke him up, you creep,"
Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum
Rum-pa-pum-pum
Rum-pa-pum-pum
"You and your drum."
Christmas and commerce do odd things to music. Yesterday, Crate & Barrel (why? don't ask) was playing a full-on, up-tempo symphony setting of "Hallelujah" from The Messiah ... without a chorus. I guess the store thought the lyrics were potentially offensive but the notes, well, they couldn't hurt anyone. Yeesh. In the fantasy world where I'm brave and think much faster, I would have sung along. Loudly.
"Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' Around the Xmas Tree," amen and good riddance!
A song I'd actually like to hear more of is "Fa-who-for-ays" (?) in the original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." It's a lovely melody, but it goes by too quickly.
Hark! The hairy angel sings,
Four jacks beats the three wise kings,
Aces high with deuces wild --
See how high the chips are piled.
Now at last I've won my fame,
Christ is beat at His own game,
Hark, the hairy angels sing,
Christ is cleaned of everything.
========
Good King Wenesclaus looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
Snowball hit him on the snout
Made it all uneven
Brightly shone his conk that night
Though the pain was cruel
When the doctor came in sight
Riding on a mu-u-le.
========
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
And the vikings are here.
We want most of your presents
We want most of your presents
We want most of your presents
And all of your beer.
Good tidings we bring
To you from the Thing!
Good tidings of Christmas,
And we'll be back next year.
============
We three kings of Orient are
One in a taxi, one in a car,
One on a scooter,
Blowing his hooter,
Following yonder star.
============
Dashing through the fray
With a double-bitted axe,
O'er the field we go
Giving out great whacks.
Sword on helmets ring
Making sparks so bright
O what fun to laugh and sing
A slaying song tonight
Bash a helm, smash a helm
Kill a man today,
Ain't it fun to profit
While we pillage, loot, and slay?
=============
Mav'rick the lonely cowboy
Had a very shiny gun,
And if you ever saw it
You would surely turn and run.
All of the other cowboys
Used to laugh and call him names,
They wouldn't let poor Mav'rick
Join in any poker games.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Sheriff came to say,
"Mav'rick with your gun so bright
Won't you shoot my wife tonight?"
Then all the other cowboys
Laughed and shouted out with glee,
"Mav'rick the lonely cowboy,
We'll hang you from the highest tree."
============
1. Jingle Bell Rock.
If I only get one, then that's it. Even the mention of it sets my teeth on edge. I've been known to walk out of a shop playing it and buy whatever I was after somewhere else. How I loathe that vapid piece of crap!
Christmas time is here, by golly!
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say when!
Kill the turkeys, ducks, and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again!
-- Tom Lehrer
For me, the siren call of the Great Old Ones, summoning my feeble brain into madness, is "Frosty the Snowman", followed closely by "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". This year, one of the local shopping malls seems to have a continuous loop of "Frosty". Bleaugh.
Overall, I don't mind religious carols, even though it isn't my religion. It's *somebody's*, which is worth something. Older is better -- the Christmas Revels have some wonderful stuff. They even have a listenable version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas". (It's what's called a "penalty". Everybody gets a certain set of verses to sing. If you sing a verse that isn't yours or if you miss one that you should be singing, you "pay the penalty", which is usually taking a drink or removing an article of clothing. Much fun.)
And then there's the one that *everybody* likes ....
I don't know what it was, but in a store the other day, I heard some fabulous surf-guitar covers of Christmas music. I don't know how it would age, but the first hearing was good.
Brave Combo couldn't resist the siren pull of the season. Their Xmas disc includes "O, Christmas Tree," "Feliz Navidad," "The Christmas Song," "Jingle Bells," and "The Little Drummer Boy."
http://brave.com/bo/discography/itschris.htm
Might be worth the purchase price just to see if they truly have power over darkness.
I have loads of Christmas music that doesn't suck; hundreds of tracks, including quite a few popular songs.
I also appear to have "Happy Holidays, Love Barney."
You'd erase Christmas songs?
That's nothing. I'd erase Christmas.
(But (a) I am the Grinch, and (b) Hogmanay is a much better festival anyway.)
Me, I'm spending Christmas Day working. Have a nice one.
The lyrics to "O Maryland" made me laugh so much everyone else came in, so I sang it to them.
Most hated would be a tie between John Lennon's "And so this is Christmas and what have we done..." and that awful "Wish I was at home for Christmas" which contains the incomparable line "Mary Bradley waits at home in the nuclear fallout zone", which always makes me snarl yes, when the men are done with the house they give the poor girl leave to be burned in it.
My favourite is "In Dulce Jubilo" with "Joy to the world" coming a close second, oh, and "Ti a Fethlehem Dref", but only in Welsh.
I was thinking about Christmas carols and Christianity this afternoon while wrapping presents, and I think there are three phrases that really do the Christmas thing for me -- "The hopes and fears of all the years", "Sing all ye citizens" and "Deep astounding joy".
How could anyone prefer Frosty the Snowman to deep astounding joy?
Alex C., I think that was probably The Ventures' Christmas Album. I've heard bits of it all season.
The Little Drummer Boy, far and away. It's anoying to the point that just listening to it can bring on a form of repetitive-motion disease.
Jeepers; all those poor studio musicians now suffering from Carpal-Tunnel syndrome because they were assured recoring a few takes of that excrable tune was "no big deal."
I believe Leonard Nimoy or William Shatner recorded an Exmass tune, but I can't recall what it was -- and (in this case)that my recall fails me I count as a blessing of the season.
My all go well and be well for you and yours.
No, the 'Christmas Shoes' deserves to be No. 1. It's treacly, manipulative and appalling.
Whoever recorded it should be defenestrated.
Well, I'll know not to play "Jingle Bell Rock" on the piano next time we meet, but without it, we'd have no "Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al, which simply fucking rules, that's all. Anyway, I have far more agreements than disagreements with your list, and I'll leave it at that, because this post exists for one purpose and one purpose only. Let me digress.
I love Spike Jones. The first record I ever owned was "Omnibust," given to me when I was stuck at home with the mumps at age 6. I played that album to death and beyond. I still have that irreplaceable vinyl, complete with horrid scratches made with pins (hey! I can play this record with a pin!) and skips I can still mimic, and a half-inch tear at the edge. I remember how hard Mom and I tried to order a new stereo copy in 1970 and 1971. I have the tape I made in Ill Manor, where I not only guided the tonearm with my fingers for take after take -- sometimes just to get a single revolution -- but also had to put up with the emanations of the spastic clicking noises and squawks from the taxi company down the alley and the inane drivel of CBs stopping at the traffic light outside my window and having to tell the world, "I'm stopped at this here traffic light!" They all came through on the tape, and Cathy cringed and I cursed and rewound and went through it all again. Yeah, I have that tape too. I got a better tape from Bud years later, but I still have that one. I love Lindley Armstrong Jones (d 1965), me.
LP reissues, I have a dozen or more, including his "serious" side. 78s -- I broke more in my hapless teens than most people have seen, but I now have a fair number of ten-inchers, including the 9-disk set Gordon Garb scored for me at a garage sale and moved around the country until Cathy finally hooked up with him and flew back home with them. I could go on. The point is, you stated that you haven't heard Spike's version of "All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)" or whichever way the parentheses go. And you think that might be okay.
No. It should be the first one on the pile to throw in the air when someone yells "PULL!"
Spike always had the best instrumentalists. Have you ever heard of a talented trumpet player named George Rock? Large fellow? He also did some vocals for Spike. He has this horrid, slidey, sideways lisping falsetto with a seasick lilt. Within seconds of him starting, you'll be wondering how much more you can take before you have to run outside and hurt a child. The recording should be banned, as should any audio and video recordings of Rock's other vocal extravaganzas. He was on Jones's TV show. Oh yes. "All I Want" should be extirpated and future generations warned against bringing it back, and it's not even the worst thing Rock did with Jones. That would be "Wanna Buy A Bunny?" I will say no more.
My personal murder list is:
1) Jingle Bell rock - Is there anyone, anywhere, who actually likes this?
2) Jingle Bells (Sleigh Ride?)
3) Little Drummer Boy - although I heard an instrumental version of this once that I could bear.
4) White Christmas.
5) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - okay, and I like Teresa's collective term "The Apocryphal Acts of Saint Nicholas" for the whole shebang of other songs in this detestable set, none of which, still, are as bad as this one.
I have observed that there are 3 kinds of carols that tend, as a genre, not to suck as much - but also not to get played as much. Humour ain't it - much as I love bits like the Arrogant Worms, it's only a step from overplay along with the novelty songs, even when it's patently opposing the spirit of the season.
1) Religious music.
2) The Grinch and all its songs. because I'm a sucker and that (The 22 minute animation, that is - as far as I'm concerned, the full length movie doesn't exist. Only seen segments - won't see more.) is my one guaranteed sappy cry for the season.
3) Songs that were written about winter or with a reference to Christmas but which were never released as "Christmas music", and don't get played as such, or at least very rarely. Someone made me a mix of this, which includes, among other things, Tori Amos' Winter, Linda Ronstadt's Winter Light, Loreena McKennit's Full Circle, and Sarah MacLachlan's Full of Grace. And some stuff more directly related to Christmas - Shawn Colvin's version of "In the Bleak Midwinter", which is a similar point to The Little Drummer Boy without the drums or the pa rum pa pum pum, for instance - but the feeling you get, the mood and tone, is about the same as you'd get with a surprisingly good Christmas album, and none of those above songs fail to fit with the mood even when the connection seems tenuous.
Although, sadly, I'm still a sucker for the music of the Nutcracker, and very occsaionally (Every several years only) I watch the ballet for the dancing - the *story* as performed is saccharine at best.
I do have to defend the Christmas Song - the Blind Boys of Alabama actually did a good rendition of a song I'm otherwise tired of. (And managed to seriously damage "oh Come All Ye Faithful".)
I still vote Heather Dale's This Endris Night as the best Christmas album I have to date. She tried to stick mostly to very aged carols (It's mis-advertised as a medieval/renaissance Chrsitmas collection), but didn't stick to very aged instrumentation. And I do like the Carnival band collections - I'd heard Steeleye Span got one out, but I ahve not seen it in stores, so it will ahve to be *Next* year's Christmas album.
When I used to sing, we did a ton of lousy holiday gigs (we're talking singing in supermarkets here, although one year we did get flown in to a gorgeous resort, and put up in their executive guest house, to provide their entertainment), and our repertoire included some nice Christmas songs that weren't too cheesy (along with, unfortunately, the cheesy ones). I'm still fond of "I Saw Three Ships", and another one we did as a round that I've unfortunately forgotten the name of.
On an entirely unrelated topic, the "Bad Food" link in Particles made me think of James Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food, which is just painful and hilarious at the same time.
James D. Macdonald, I think I love you. Thank you for those :-)
(says one of the heathens who was DONE, DONE, DONE with the holiday season three days ago and is now very impatient with waiting for everyone else to stop being crazy.)
Yes, someone likes Jingle Bell Rock. I'm the guilty one. The stations and stores play it every year in their endless bids to encourage me to support them. If they only knew how much I like and could be influenced by Comfortably Numb.
KIP! Jump! In 30+ years of record collecting, I've NEVER seen a copy of Omnibust on sale before.
Here's the lyrics to the Maryland state song: http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyrics.html
As for why Rob Hansen knew "Oh Maryland" well... look at the link for the lyrics. Blame Avedon.
And my choice for one song to be erased? "Grandma got run over by the reindeer". Boil it in oil, boil it in lead.
Many and many a year ago, in another world, I took a schoolbus into school and back; we weren't quite the very last stop, but close, and in fact had to walk a considerable distance to get to the start of the laneway, which was itself about half a kilometer long.
One fine day was the cold after freezing rain; great massive lots of freezing rain, two inches of smooth ice on the (gravel) roads, and quite an impressive cold, so that the ice was a hard, ringing thing, not slick even where the sun fell full on it.
Which is probably why, not very far from our stop, the schoolbus wound up in the -- deep! -- ditch, quite abruptly but from a low velocity, so that nothing was particularly wrong except for the extreme degree of stuckness involving in being past axle deep in snow with a hard crust of ice on it, and the snow resting on ditch water frozen clean through, there being nothing in any of the these materials able to provide significant friction.
Now, the next farm past ours was owned by Cow George Cooch. (Though it may have been spelt 'Couch'. It was a long time ago.) This is important because while he and Horse George Cooch were some sort of cousins, Horse George had gone into llama and emu breeding, and Cow George had semi-retired, with his son running the dairy farm and George being free to persue his fondness for draft horses, which he kept at that neighbouring farm.
(I've had a score of so of young heavy horses come pelting down a long hill toward me at a dead run. They just wanted to say hello but it gives one an appreciation for Henry V; you really *do* feel it in your feet.)
George's response to the ice was to bring a big flat working sleigh out with an eight horse hitch, and pull the bus out of the ditch *sideways*.
The horses were all very excited -- they got to really *pull* something -- and George was delighted -- 'a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' was clearly something he'd been wanting so good an excuse to say loudly for a long time -- and we got home not particularly late.
The two things I best remember are the horses stepping together, and the ice spalling away from the cleats in their shoes -- the bare concrete walkway they passed over spalled just the same -- and the sound of the sleighbells, as the whole apparatus of sleigh and horses jogged up the hill.
I can't stand Jingle Bells all the same, but there was something real there, however dimly seen -- that was freedom of movement, or the exhilaration of speed, or both together, not so very long ago.
The only Xmas songs I can listen to--excepting those done at St.John's or by some Cambridge Choir (or, in the case of "Three Ships," Roger McGuinn) are "Christmas in Hollis" and "Christmas Wrapping." (Basic assumption that such efforts--word used advisedly--as "Do They Know It's Xmas" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"--are never going to be canonical, even for the UUs. Which unfortunately also probably includes Melissa Etheridge's "Christmas in America.")
Of course, I learned five Xmas songs, including "I Want a Hippopotamus," from a 7-inch Three Stooges EP, so meing willing to defend "Jingle Bell Rock" would be easy--it would just come from an indefensible position.
However, if we're allowing limited-edition releases, I may play "North Pole Fats" for the next person who expresses an appreciation of The Residents and wishes they would do a Xmas album.
Personally, I vastly prefer white Christmasses to gray/green ones. White Christmasses are bright, which is important for those of us who would much rather be hibernating than dealing with family.
I'm fond of most carols, though I have the habit of trying to find pagan words for most of them, purely to annoy my in-laws. (And to remind them that their religion stole Sun Return.)
The Elmer Fudd version of "Blue Christmas" never fails to crack me up.
My English grandmother was once at the church hall, with her children, when the vicar was playing a medley of Christmas songs on the piano. When he got to O Tannenbaum, she said in puzzlement "That's the tune to The People's Flag!"
I enjoy singing it quietly to muzak versions.
So raise the scarlet standard high / Beneath its shade we'll live and die / Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer / We'll keep the red flag flying here.
And I hate to admit it, but I too am moved by Little Drummer Boy, though not quite to tears. That is reserved for Two Little Boys, the Rolf Harris version. Thankfully that isn't played at Christmas, or I'd be a mess.
Oh, man -- $60? Is this not an auction? I don't see a time limit, just a "buy it now" price of sixty dollars. Cathy's asleep. I'll have to think about this.
Anyway. I like "Jingle Bells"; the modern version to hum or play on a keyboard, and the original, odd-sounding version to hear on the radio two times a year or so. As to Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," I don't sit around and listen to anyone else do it, but I dearly love to play it on the piano. I love going around those corners and taking those notes with my fingers. And I like the sound it makes as my fingers dance. Meredith Willson's cornball tune doesn't bother me. Maybe I got to like it when we performed it in grade school -- familiarity tends to breed comfort in me. Some of my favorite music was actually drummed into me by my older sisters. Perhaps as part of a science experiment, I'm not sure. I'll put Silver Bells and The Christmas Song in this category. I hated Mel Torme at first. "White Christmas" is okay when Bing sings it, though I actually acquired a taste for it late in life, from Cathy.
"Let it Snow" is notable because I thought of doing a Star Trek:TNG filk on it called "Make It So." Fill in the details yourself. ("Make it so, Number One, Make it so." That's as much as I'll go.) Wow. Now that I look at this list, I can see I'm quite a sap. Heh. I ought to shut up!
Wait, here's what the Christmas Song section of my White Book (the vocal half of my traveling music) consists of: "Rise Up, Shepherd," "O Holy Night," and "The Birthday of a King." Oh, and "Jingle Bell Rock," all the way at the back of the book. I'm guessing I stuck it in there one Christmas, just to be ready, and left it in because one of its pages has the start of "Palisades Park" on it.
Okay, I am a sloppy sentimentalist (I suspect Teresa knows this). I like most Christmas Carols (as opposed to Christmas songs) pretty well, particularly when they're instrumental. And I tend to favor the less popular ones, like "On This Day Earth Shall Ring" over "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." All of A Charlie Brown Christmas is sacred in our household, as is all the music from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which we watched this evening before shoveling the young toward their rooms. (Actually, I'd get rid of "Winter Was Cold" from the score, but that's just me.)
However. I really hate "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," this despite the fact that both the kids have played Rudolph in preschool performances. Johnny Marks, who wrote the damned song, was married to one of my mother's best friends. And he was an unpleasant man who made a fortune from writing Christmas songs; every year with their Christmas card would come a new recording (a 45. God, I'm old) of "Rudolph." So I hate it. No negotiation.
I must add that, were I a sales clerk in one of those stores where they have tinny animatronic gadgets that play Christmas songs when a button is pushed, stationed near the checkout registers, I would be about ready to kill someone by this time of year.
Don't forget Jethro Tull's kinda preachy "Christmas Song":
Once in royal david’s city stood a lonely cattle shed,
Where a mother held her baby.
You’d do well to remember the things he later said.
When you’re stuffing yourselves at the christmas parties,
You’ll just laugh when I tell you to take a running jump.
You’re missing the point I’m sure does not need making
That christmas spirit is not what you drink.
So how can you laugh when your own mother’s hungry,
And how can you smile when the reasons for smiling are wrong?
And if I just messed up your thoughtless pleasures,
Remember, if you wish, this is just a christmas song.
(hey! santa! pass us that bottle, will you? )
I'm not fond of Rudolph and Jingle Bells, but I like most of those sappy old Christmas songs. I like the cozy imagery of chestnuts roasting on an open fire (I love that smell, I love chestnets, I love open fires....) and I love Nat King Cole's voice on the version we had at home.
I like the snow songs, too, mostly. Which is about as close as I get to snow most years, alas.
Here's the best explanation I've seen for the different lyrics to "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," from NPR, in discussing James Taylor's then [2001] new Christmas album:
In the '50s, Sinatra had the line "Hang a shining star upon the highest bow" inserted in place of the darker, original line "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow." Taylor, though, wanted to stay faithful to the Meet Me in St. Louis tone: "I always sort of thought of this song with these lyrics from the movie," he said. "And it resonates more with me this way, with the sort of sadder, more melancholy lyrics. I like it better."
As for songs to drop, my vote (or one of them) goes to "Holly Jolly Christmas." Followed by Sir Paul's inane "Wonderful Christmastime."
I'm calling a special dispensation condition...being Jewish, I want to vape "I Have A Little Dreidel" (or Adam Sandler's insanity) so some people get exposed to good Chanukkah music. Ma'oz Tzur (Rock of Ages) or Light One Candle are what I'm fond of.
And Teresa: I like "Joy To The World" too, but I prefer Three Dog Night. *grin*
Call me a sap, but I like a lot of the Tin Pan Alley Christmas songs, as well as the tradition carols and songs. It sort of depends on which version, though. The Roches' Christmas album has been one of my favorites for a long time. Then, of course, there's Ella Fitzgerald singing White Christmas and The Christmas Song, Dinah Washington singing Silent Night, etc. Oh, and Earl Scrugg's take on Jingle Bells is kind of amusing. Wilie Nelson doing Please Come Home For Christmas isn't half bad either.
Yeah, I'm a sap.
Jim -- to go along with your list, here's the summary version of something I heard in a Music&Cultures distribution course:
We three kings of orient are
Tried to smoke a rubber cigar
It was loaded, and exploded -- Poof!
We two...
We one...
Silent night .....
Lightning: it's usually "forfeit", not "penalty". (I was in the early Revels and several of the predecessors, although not the Dustin Hoffman appearance....)
cyclopatra: as one still doing that, my sympathies.
wrt which, Teresa: imagine having to \rehearse/ "Sleigh Ride", or "Little Drummer Boy", or ... well enough to perform it! And I can't even grumble wholeheartedly, because here are enough people who will pay to hear that sort of thing that it subsidizes the orchestral concerts. And there's this only-half-bad version of "Jingle Bells" -- imagine treating it the way Lehrer treated "Clementine". OTOH, we do get to do the Parker/Shaw arrangements of some of the old favorites -- the first time I picked up the burgundy book and went through my Nth version of "Masters in This Hall" the hindbrain made growly approving noises, recognizing something it had heard when we were in small single digits. And the other chorus's theme was French, which was more interesting even if we again did the Ukrainian bell carol, which may the the most overexposed old\&/obscure piece in the repertory.
If it's after 1741, I probably loathe it.
But even for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, there are pallatives:
Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus
Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor --
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
Ða hofberendas mid huscwordum hine gehefigodon;
Nolden þa geneatas Hrodulf næftig
To gomene hraniscum geador ætsomne.
Þa in Cristesmæsseæfne stormigum clommum,
Halga Claus þæt gemunde to him maðelode:
"Neahfreond nihteage nosubeorhtende!
Min hroden hrædwæn gelæd ðu, Hrodulf!"
Ða gelufodon hira laddeor þa lyftflogan --
Wæs glædnes and gliwdream; hornede sum gegieddode
"Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor,
Brad springð þin blæd: breme eart þu!"Explicit
Philip Craig Chapman-Bell, via Catherine Ball.
"The Little Drummer Boy" rocks. I'm anteing Bing Crosby and David Bowie. What've you got?
I will grant that the classic version is hardly the best, and Bing and Dave's isn't either. Brave Combo's is nice, and I wish I could track down the one that I heard the other night that put a break in my voice.
There's a lot of story packed into a few lines. If I ever write anything half as good, I'll be proud.
It's also got a pretty good take on Christmas: Give what you've got. Now, you could argue that that's an artist's take on Christmas, because the adult Jesus seemed to think you should be giving your goods as well as your art. But the "poor boy" line makes it pretty clear that was about all that the kid had. Maybe he didn't give as much as the old woman at the temple with two mites, but he did pretty good.
Having said all that, I have to admit that I suspect the baby Jesus's smile meant he had gas. But I hope no one tells that to the drummer boy.
Merry Christmas, Darling. As much as I love Karen Carpenter's voice, she couldn't save that one.
Hey, merry christmas, NHs
Alex Cohen and Linkmeister: the surf rock Christmas music in question may have been the Ventures, but it might also have been The Blue Hawaiians' Christmas on Big Island. Merry Christmas!
James, that Good King Wenceslas cries out to be used in a Mummer's Play.
We Three Kings is wonderful to sing if one gets the Myrrh verse -- even my 10 yr old niece knows that's the verse to grab! Can you tell I'm just back from a party that included singing classic carols?
A lot of these are really awful to listen to, but secretly very pleasant to sing, particularly with other amateurs -- how often do we really get to sing with others for our own enjoyment? Singing is a very different experience than listening.
A Merry Christmas to you and to Patrick, Teresa. So suffused with the solstice spirit am I that I won't even complain you spelled my name wrong.
Now I'm off to put the big bird in the oven. We have Jordin and Mary Kay staying this year but the bird is the same size as when it's just me and Avedon. No point getting a turkey unless it lasts you a week, I always say.
CHip: As much as I loathed the whole singing-by-the-frozen-meats thing, I miss it as well. Quitting smoking on New Year's, hopefully to have a halfway decent voice again in a year or so. I never intended to go pro, but I miss it desperately as a pastime.
Jo: the line 'Wish I could be home for Christmas' is from Jona Lewie's Stop the Cavalry, which is definitely one of my favourite Christmas songs. Yes, the lyrics are kludgy, but the central image of cold wet soldiers through the centuries, away from home and loved ones, being ordered around by warm rich people for dubious purposes, is a good one.
Jim:
We Three Kings of Orient are, wearing knickers, tuppence a pair. How fantastic, no elastic, not very safe to wear. (star of wonder, star of light, sit on a box of dynamite, light the fuse and off we go, blast our way to Mexico).
This one encapsulates, in four lines, the whole of UK culture circa 1970: While shepherds washed their socks by night all watching ITV, the angel of the Lord came down and switched to BBC.
Marianne contributes: Little donkey, little donkey, we're sorry that you're dead, little donkey, little donkey, we've barbecued your head.
some comments:
I don't know what Pa-rump-pa-bleeding-pump means, but it doesn't sound good.
All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth). i remember when i first heard it, i was so disappointed because i had always imagined it being sung by tom waits and being about having the shit kicked out of you by santa claus.
" I’ve never been able to see why a snowed-upon Christmas should be more real than a rainy one."
i forgive you.
"Sleigh Ride/Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!/Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland. Apparently sleighbells, fireplaces, and bad weather have an aphrodisiac effect on Northeasterners...."
i am looking out my window at the sunny day where all the snow from yesterday melted, and thinking this is the fault of global warming and blaming george bush. and i am not at all turned on, so right there we can see that your anti-snow philosophy is wrong and evil.
" Silver Bells. I live in a city. Do you live in a city? Have you ever heard these supposed bells? No? I haven’t either. So what the hell is this guy on about?"
the salvation army.
"It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. "
I love singing this when it's snowing in february.
"The Apocryphal Acts of Saint Nicholas" you seem to have forgotten grandma got run over by a reindeer.
"Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Unless sung by Bruce Springsteen." the worst song he ever did.
I'm going to have to go with Ulrika here. I'm a big fat sucker for "Little Drummer Boy."
Really, there are very few Christmas songs I can't stand, except for some of the novelties. Jingle Bells may be cliche', but every time I hear it it reminds me of driving home late at night from Maryland after celebrating Christmas with my grandmother, aunts, and uncles, singing carols to stay awake.
I'm going to go with Ulrika here: Little Drummer Boy may be sappy and overplayed, but I'm a big damn sucker for it.
And Jingle Bells always reminds me of coming home from my aunt's house on Christmas Day, with the world dark and frosty outside, and my family singing Christmas carols to stay awake.
Argh. My browser crashed, I came back to check that it hadn't posted, it wasn't there... damn you, internets!
by the way, you'll have to excuse my grammar impaired commenting style, as the keyboard i have at home drops keys and tends to refuse capitalization.
Oh, and Jon H's mention of Jethro Tull's Christmas Song reminds me to put in a vote for Ewan McColl's Moving On Song (Go! Move! Shift!). And Christo ya Nacio is lovely as well. Need to add them both to my Christmas playlist...
I love them most of them. The major exeception is Little Drummer Boy.
The three best Christmas songs for me are O Holy Night as sung by Jussi Björling, Queen's Thank God It's Christmas and of course Fairytale of New York
Most of my "must be killed" list has already been hit, with one exception. Some of my favorite Christamases growing up were in Germany in the late 60's' as I was a sucker for white Decembers and trips to Christkindlmarkt after growing up in Louisiana. The one exception to this was Heintje, an apparently 12 year old singer that could not be escaped, especially at Christmas in those years. This stuff is strictly fingernails across a blackboard to me, and I still have fantasies of skeet shooting at copies of Weinachten mit Heintje. In Hell, they play Kling, Glockchen, Kling over and over again.
On the positive side, I do favor the Wexford Carol, expecially when sung by Nanci Griffith, and Shawn Colvin's Holiday Songs and Lullabies is good too. Add some medieval music, Gabrielli, John Rutter, and John Tavener and stir.
Whoa. Was just coming to this to note down that there was a documentary about a Christmas song that sounded pretty good, by The Pogues & the lamented Kirsty McColl on right now on SBS in Sydney when I noticed Teresa had already mentioned it as one she didn't mind. "Curses, foiled again!". Shane MacGowan's remaining teeth & voice are worth a study in themselves.
Can I bring y'all the news that it's been voted Best Christmas Song by certain British TV viewers this year? www.chartattack.com/damn/2004/12/1603.cfm
My small household is having a very quiet Christmas Day -- we neither have energy right now for a big splash -- and preparing to watch the start of the Sydney-Hobart race on Boxing Day. For weeks now the blades of the big maxi-yachts have been carving through Sydney Harbour and environs, enlivening my occasional ferry trips.
Several years ago, there was a BBC Radio 1 DJ who played an album of novelty Christmas tunes every year. The one which sticks in my memory to this day was one called "Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear", sung to the tune of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland". Always brings a smile to my face when I hear "Winter Wonderland".
Ah, well, can't avoid the family any longer... Have a merry one, and I hope next year is less sucky than this one.
I would eliminate 'Rocking around the Christmas tree', 'Jingle Bell Rock' and 'White Christmas'.
Oh, and I can't believe no one's mentioned yet 'Mistletoe and Wine' by Cliff Richard! I think it has to be my #1 choice.
I can bear pretty much all traditional carols (especially the pre-Victorian ones), but could do without Little Drummer Boy. And the best version of 'Twelve Days of Christmas' is the Frank Kelly one!
For the last few years, the Christmas album that's gotten heaviest play here at Chez Baugh is Projekt Records' Excelsis: A Dark Noel. This is a set of mostly traditional Christmas standards covered by goth and ethereal bands, and it's got some great work on it - the performances are intelligent and respectful. I cut out a few tracks for my personal playlist, but not many, and the rest are a real delight.
Patrick just put on some prime holiday music:
Inspiration, move me brightlyI'm too old to apologize for what I love.
Light the song with sense and color
Hold away despair
More than this I will not ask
Faced with mysteries dark and vast
Statements just seem vain at last...
Tayefeth, you can sing Meum est propositum in taberna mori to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas," and impress everyone who thinks songs sung in Latin must necessarily be religious.
Graydon, I believe you're the only person I know who has direct personal knowledge of horse-drawn sleighs. I can easily imagine that they're way cool, if your normal transportation is limited to carriages, farm carts, and the occasional ride in a railway car. It's just that when you're a kid living in the desert, you get tired of hearing about other people's bad weather. Also, I can well believe that you had white Christmases, and people in Wisconsin and Minnesota do the same; but New York is where all those songs got published, and do you know how often you see white Christmases here? I'm not sure I've seen more than one or two, and I've been here since 1984. Actually, I'm not sure I've seen any.
Kip, that sounds ... not quite priceless. As in, you'd pay money not to hear it. But it does sound like the appropriate arrangement for that song.
Jo:
I was thinking about Christmas carols and Christianity this afternoon while wrapping presents, and I think there are three phrases that really do the Christmas thing for me -- "The hopes and fears of all the years", "Sing all ye citizens" and "Deep astounding joy".No idea. I have no idea. How can they prefer "The Christmas Shoes" to "O Holy Night" or "Adam Lay Ybounden" or "Dona Nobis Pacem"?How could anyone prefer Frosty the Snowman to deep abounding joy?
I love your selection of lines there.
Lightning: "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie" has been ceremoniously posted to Particles; thank you. I resonate with your "Even though it isn't my religion, it's *somebody's*, which is worth something." I'd far rather hear someone else's religious music than tripe like "Jingle Bell Rock."
Charlie, you want to get rid of Christmas, spend the day working, and celebrate Hogmanay instead? Man, I knew you were living there, but I didn't realize you'd gone native.
Jim, those songs are fab. The only one I knew was "Mav'rick the Lonesome Cowboy," which we always sang as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Cowboy" -- all hail the oral tradition.
Clark, I can't parse that sentence. Best of the holiday season to you, too.
Dave Luckett, I can see how that would be loathsome, but what's a boomer?
Anna: When I Google on "Tu scendi dalle stelle," it tells me the music's by Alphonsus Liguori and the words are by Pio Nonno. That sounds scary. Is it the same song?
(Here Teresa fell asleep, and when she awoke, wandered off to bed without hitting "post".)
Teresa: and you say Nat King Cole recorded "All I Want For Christmas (teeth)"? If anybody could save a song... well, I've said this: If he was alive, and he was the leader of a crazy nut cult, and he sang everything, I'd probably join.
Some here will have seen this already, so instead of quoting it I'll link to my own favorite snowman song, in the spirit of the season. Note: some stabbing.
And from the same Bag O Tricks (tm) but without so much bloodshed, my very own well-nigh interminable Canterbury Carol, keyed in an obsessed afternoon at the beginning of the year now crawling off to the Old Years' Home.
Sarah, I should add, opened and opened and opened this morning. Opened more than her total mass in presents. What a trooper -- she circled the tree looking for more when the last present was gone. She is the spirit of Christmas present.
Things ain't so bad.
Well, I'd just like to say that many of these songs aren't bad if done well -- i.e. not in flat, rhythmically ironed, sappy arrangements. In particular "The Little Drummer Boy" works a lot better if accompanied by doumbeks and tambourines, with a percussion break before (or during) the third verse. (People always make this joke about me (this year I got the "Little Drummer Boy Award"), whenever I play in a Christmas concert, and I always pretend to be hearing it for the first time, and to find it wonderfully amusing.)
And the ORIGINAL version of "Sleigh Ride" isn't bad...it's an instrumental, and the lyrics were tacked on later. And boy does it show!
"Adeste Fideles" and "O Tannenbaum" and "Stille Nacht" should always be sung in the original languages, never in English. This improves them enormously, especially if you don't understand those languages...
By the way, "O Tannenbaum," like "Deck the Halls," never mentions Christmas at all (in the original -- I'm not responsible for lyrics written, rewritten, or mistranslated later), and I claim it as a Yule song. I'm told that "Good King You-Know-Who" was originally a French spring carol, which explains the lameness of the English lyrics -- which are also theologically appalling according to my Christian friends (blessing the poor will NOT, contrary to the song's lyrics, get a wealthy man into Heaven). I take their word for it.
Yesterday, I dove for the Mute button when JessiChristinAvril (I can't be bothered distinguishing) came on the TV singing "O Holy Night" -- which is not a carol, but a Christmas piece meant for a well-trained voice, which none of these bimbi has. BTW, Fred Kuhn wrote this:
O holy shit, the snow is softly falling;And also, the Roches Christmas album has some great stuff on it, including the only non-repellent version of "Frosty the Snowman" I've ever heard. A bunch of actual children sing the choruses, and the Roches themselves sing in thick NJ accents...it ends with
This is a night to go straight home to bed.
Vitamin C, says Doctor Linus Pauling,
Is just the thing for that cold in your head.
A toke, a smoke, a friendly glass awaiting
Just one more block, just one more street to cross...
Fall on your knees,
Your rear, or just go sprawling,
O night supine
O night when ice was formed...
In your Easter bonnet,
With the ribbons on it,
You'll be the only snowman at the Easter Parade!
Having worked in a department store at Christmas, I can assure you that *all* songs, no matter how delightful, become nails-down-the-blackboard awful when sung by motion-sensitive animatronic snowmen or electronic cards. Especially when little kiddies think it's fun to jump up and down in front of the snowman or open the card repeatedly while parents/grandparents do the shopping...
The song on my Most Hated list is a variation on 'Jingle Bell Rock', only more frenetic, and with different lyrics, and thank God I can't find said lyrics on the internet. Maybe that means no one has officially recorded it, though it's managed to weasel its way into the local Christmas play...hmm, lessee, at least seven years running, despite having no redeeming features whatsoever. And every time I hear it, I want to run, or scream (or both), but instead end up just standing there cringing and waiting for the torture to cease.
"Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock,
Time is tickin' on that Christmas clock
Come on! It's Christmas time!..."
*shudder*
There are other songs on that list, including a Rolf Harris song that I just heard for the first time and would kill never to hear again. I'm with you, Dave - I don't care how un-Australian it is, I'm not singing a song about six white boomers... (Teresa - a "boomer" is a male kangaroo; females are called flyers).
My favourite Christmas song, on the other hand, is 'O Holy Night' as she is sung in my own head. Closest real-world version is Rickie Lee Jones and the Chieftains, even though Rickie sounds somewhat sloshed. There are worse ways to sound when singing Christmas songs :).
To my intense chagrin, there's a rather large number of more modern songs to which I simply can't recall the original words. 'Walking 'round in women's underwear' - 'I'm dreaming of a (Bob) White Christmas'[0] - O Tannenbaum became 'Oh Tom the Toad' at some point during grade school.
There's a horrible trend in Christmas music this year that seems to involve covers of already trite and dreadful songs in genres that are seldom done well to begin with. If I was a suspicious sort, I might think that somebody with a sick sense of humour managed to slip the idea (along with the vodka martinis) to some impressionable recording executives.
As far as good Christmas music goes? The Anglican nine lesons and carols service (especially from Westminster) is astoundingly lovely - and listening to 'In the bleak midwinter' sung by the achingly pure voice of a boy treble into the high vaults is bone chilling.
[0] Bob White was the leader of the Canadian Auto Workers union, and rather fond of going on strike. The song includes lines like 'may your strikes be merry and bright'.
I tend to like any kind of Christmasy music. There are so many things to object to today in the world, the least of my worries is the proliferation of winter season songs generally meant to give us some holiday cheer.
xopher: I recall a footnote to "Wenceslaus" saying the tune was originally "Tempus Adest Floream" (sic???), so calling it a Spring song is plausible.
I love all the old traditional carols, if sung by choirs. Hate the tin-pan-alley songs, which are always about commerce or false sentiment. Unless they're sung with heart and irony, a la Bruce.
But my favorite Christmas music is medieval. It's not Christmas for me without The Play of Herod. Which incidentally commemorates a part of the Christmas story that gets overlooked a lot.
CHip: I looked it up on the net; apparently it's actually "Tempus Adest Floridum." Here are some lyrics:
Tempus adest floridum, surgent namque flores
Vernales in omnibus, imitantur mores
Hoc quod frigus laeserat, reparant calores
Cernimus hoc fieri, per multos labores.
Sunt prata plena floribus, iucunda aspectu
Ubi iuvat cernere, herbas cum delectu
Gramina et plantae hyeme quiescunt
Vernali in tempore virent et accrescunt.
Haec vobis pulchre monstrant Deum creatorem
Quem quoque nos credimus omnium factorem
O tempus ergo hilare, quo laetari libet
Renovato nam mundo, nos novari decet.
Terra ornatur floribus et multo decore
Nos honestis moribus et vero amore
Gaudeamus igitur tempore iucundo
Laudemusque Dominum pectoris ex fundo.
There's an English "translation" on the site, but it rhymes and scans, which makes me strongly doubt its accuracy. Any of you Latinists want to have a go at a meaning-accurate translation?
Gesso wrote: I'm with you, Dave - I don't care how un-Australian it is, I'm not singing a song about six white boomers... (Teresa - a "boomer" is a male kangaroo; females are called flyers).
Hrm. My guesses were either "Baby boomer"-- and doing anything with six white ones would be problematic-- or "boomer" as in "submarine carrying nuclear missiles," which I figured was a tie-in to Christmas at Ground Zero.
Teresa --
I can understand not wanting to hear about other people's bad weather, though thinking of snow as bad weather is going to take me a modicum of cognitive re-alignment. (No snow = drought in spring. It's the driving sleet and the freezing rain and the howling, life-stealing wind that are the bad weather; snow is a good thing, especially from the nineteenth century agrarian bias suitable to most of that era's carols.)
And, well, for me, Yuletide is about blood on the snow, faith in the return of the warm sun held in the chill darkness, and staying up all night to see if this night is the night the giants come, because the Wolf is loosed and all things have come in time to die.
Christmas music I especially and particularly like, well --
The Barra MacNeils' version of, Christmas Comes But Once a Year --
Home then to the laden table
handed fruits and pints of beer
whisky handed round in tumblers
Christmas comes but once a year!
Much in the character of a "we're not going to freeze in the dark" song.
(The Barra MacNeils do Auld Lang Syne, too, on the same "Christmas album", intelligibly, elegantly, and with the entire lyrics, but that isn't properly a Christmas song.)
Pretty much all of the Loreena McKennitt CD "To Drive the Cold Winter Away", which is traditional carols recorded in old churches, in a style quite unlike Ms. McKennitt's other music. (To the extent that there are old churches in Ontario, at the very least.) Particularly The King done as four (?) part harmony, and Good King Wensclas from "A Winter Garden", a short (five track) CD on a similar theme.
The Irish Descendants have a Christmas CD, called "The Gift"; it does have a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" on it, but it has also got a rendition of "The Wassail Song" that is much to my taste.
Delete without mercy? Any Christmas song as done by Pat Boone or other bland treacle-meisters of the Fifties and Sixties.
The lyric that always runs through my head at this time of year is: "We wish you a merry Christmas/ And please buy our beer." Stan Freeburg? (May have got that name wrong. I've been online so long this morning, the brain is getting fried.) Some of the latest crop of TV ads outdo that one in blatant, shameless commerciality.
"Jingle Bell Rock" is acceptable when sung by The Christmas Jug Band, in a sloshed-sounding performance that includes the voice of Dan Hicks. Their most memorable CD title, incidentally, is "Mistletoe Jam" (while the cover art of "Uncorked" is priceless). As for "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", it's the only less-than-delightful cut on the Turtle Island String Quartet's "By the Fireside" CD -- which includes flamboyantly melancholic (to these ears) Yiddish song "By the Fireside", some Praetorius, Tchaikovsky and Bach, and "Winter" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" rearranged into fascinating modern instrumentals (e.g. "Texas Rain").
Hark...
Reminds me... Many years ago, when I was a grad student, there was a Christmas-time competition in the grad student dorm-- come up with a pun on the title of a Christmas carol that involves the name of a fish. The two winning entries were 'Shark, The Herald Angels Sing' and 'Little Tuna Bethlehem".
Sense translation -- It's the time of growth and flowers, everything is starting to bloom, praise God we got through winter!
I'm listening very happily to Peter Paul and Mary's Carry It On box set. Good music for any time.
Kip, Sarah's not that big, she could easily get presents that outweigh her. Jill thinks I probably shouldn't have sent what I did, but I figure you're a musician and she might want to join in. Feel free to hide it if Jill's right.
Thanks for the lovely story, by the way, Graydon.
I. 10. Blue Christmas. Maudlin and dreary, an exercise in self-pity.
Even as sung by Porky Pig.
*****
II. Having worked for a number of years in retail (a small family-owned flea market stand), I loathe almost all Christmas music that gets airplay. Consequently, most of the religious stuff, and most of the noncanonical versions, are less objectionable.
What I really want, of course, is the original pagan lyrics to "The Holly and the Ivy" -- and some way to document their pre-Christian origins.
*****
III. The single worst aspect of Christmas music, though, is how many folks who claim to be Christian are incapable of singing it because they don't know the lyrics. Saturday Night Live's skit with Elliot Gould as the yeshiva coach receiving the basketball league championship trophy from St. Mickey's Knights of Columbus, none of whom can get past the first line or two while Gould keeps going like the Energizer Bunny, is the classic statement on the subject.
*****
Here's hoping Hanukkah Harry brought you all LOTS of nice sweaters and socks (and tucked your digital cameras, iPods, and other cool stuff safely inside!).
P&T: If listening to Terrapin put you in the mood for more, here's a bit of the
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