Reader Dan sends along a song about the War on Christmas.
So now it’s time for one of my favorite topics: which holiday season song do you hate the most? I agree that objectively, the Paul McCartney “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas” song is the worst, but I’m not hearing it much yet, so I don’t hate it the most right now. I want to specify that holiday season song includes anything that is played only this time of year, so it includes Frosty The Snowman, The Dradle Dreidel song (both of of which I like), and the holiday season song I dislike the most right now….that Peanuts holiday song that goes doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo doo-doo, I don’t know what they’re saying. I’m not trying to be contrarian here, that song bugs me.
I guess I’ve never understood Peanuts. It may go over my head, like Wilco and Italo Calvino apparently do, but I don’t understand why a comic about kids should be so melancholy. I mean, they’ll have plenty of time to be depressed and neurotic when they grow up and realize how crappy everything is, right?
Runner up for most annoying holiday season song: “I Know That This Will Be A Very Special Christmas For Me”.
What are your most hated holiday season songs?
Tsukune
Dominic the Donkey. Augh. Just augh.
To see the melencholy in Peanuts, lop off the last panel.
Moik
Sleigh Ride, hands down.
Maude
Santa Baby
Grandma got run over by a reindeer
There are so many I can’t possible remember them.
The jingle bells barking dogs
BD of MN
“Christmas Shoes”, hands down worst song ever…
DougJ
@Moik:
I love that one.
Svensker
Madonna’s exact copy of “Santa Baby.” How DARE she?
Also, too, the weepy country/western ones about the little kids who are poor/sick/benighted until some miracle happens on Christmas Eve and then everything is wonderful and frabjus. I just frigging hate those songs.
Rosalita
Dogs barking Jingle Bells…
Dreggas
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
You hear it everywhere and all it looks like to me is someone put kermit the frog in a blender then dumped the result all over the place.
Don’t get me wrong, I like christmas, I especially like giving gifts to people. I just detest seeing stores where Halloween isn’t done and over with but they already have a christmas section started.
satby
All of them. I hate all of them. Used to like a few, but that was before they started playing them at Halloween. So we all “get in the spirit” and buy more crap.
LGRooney
All depends on my mood for any given year. Definitely not feeling Christmas-y this year, in the least. I want to kick Burl Ives in the nuts for “Holly Jolly Christmas” and Andy Williams would be in trouble if he traipsed into my neighborhood because it most definitely is not “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”
evinfuilt
damn you DougJ, usually I’d be angry at someone disparaging a Beatle. But no, Now I’m angry that that song has become an Ear Worm after reading that one line (that is repeated over and over and over and over and o….)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Did Calvin and Hobbes blow your mind, since it was also not for kids, but about one?
Violet
Little Drummer Boy. I’ve always hated it. Go pa-rum-pa-pum-pum yourself, Little Drummer Boy. Ugh.
I love Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Never fails to make me chuckle.
j low
This is the best Peanuts X-mas variation ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uPCZlkGIBU&sns=fb
Aet
“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”. It’s not the song, so much as the cheerful tone. It’s vaguely ominous, almost Orwellian.
‘You can say there’s no such thing as Santa/But as for me and Grandpa, we believe’: it sounds like a singsong threat. Believe in Santa, or else.
Satanicpanic
Wham! Last Christmas.
Rosalita
let’s not forget the Adam Sandler Hanukkah abomination
BO_Bill
The worst Christmas song is that fuc*ing chipmunk song where they sing about ‘my true love gave to me…’ and something about partridges and five golden rings. The second worst Christmas song is the same song performed by the Muppets. When certain individuals are consigned to spaces within A Facility where they cannot move, and are compelled by their employer to listen to both of these songs, like, back-to-back, it at best constitutes workplace harassment, in my opinion.
wapsie
Punch-drunk, exhausted in-concert Bruce Springsteen bellowing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.
“Clarence! You been workin’ and practicin’ real hard… Santa’ll bring you a new saxophone…”
Ugh.
DougJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I think I understood Calvin and Hobbes.
Dreggas
here’s a good one though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ftld7Ohojg
Guy
Any song with jingling bells in the background or any song featured in a holiday car commercial makes me want to climb up in a clock tower with a high powered rifle by the time January rolls around.
The Harris Teeter (regional grocery chain) near my house is bucking the trend and seems to be featuring 80’s hair metal instead of Christmas music lately. I would like to personally thank whoever is in charge of that.
Jay B.
There’s another Peanuts piece where the choir is moaning out some high-pitched Christmas song and I always think it’s called A Seasonal Lament for Dead Children. It’s haunting and the anti-cheer for the already depressing holiday season.
The best Christmas song and the one I listen to even out of season is Father Christmas by the Kinks. It’s funny and angry and true.
BrYanS
Last Christmas is a bad one
Little Saint Nick by the Beach Boys drives me Chrazy too.
gbear
Once I actually paid attention to the words of The First Noel, I realized that it was written by some doddering old schoolmarm who wouldn’t know poetry from pottery.
The first Noel the angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay.
In fields where they lay keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.
The restaurant I went to for lunch was playing the Neil Diamond version. Double whammy…
Satanicpanic
@Aet: I always took it as a threat that you’d better believe Grandpa’s ridiculous alibi.
MariedeGournay
Normally I think Sinatra is grand, but if I hear his goddamn Christmas song again I’m going to take an ice pick to my ears.
Robert
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has always bugged me. It’s totally about date rape. At one point she asks something like, “oh, my, what’s in this drink?,” so it’s possible that he even roofied her. But, either way, dude needs to learn that no means no. And the fact that it’s snowing is no excuse to keep pestering this woman to spend the night.
Face
War on Christmas?
Try War on Blacks’ Hairstyling
Hard to envision that this shit can actually happen in 2011.
schtum
It’s a fantastic song, so I feel bad saying this, but I’ve heard like 8 different versions of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” so far this month, and they are not all created equal, to put it mildly. It’s starting to grate.
Brian R.
@BD of MN:
True, but it gave us an amazing bit by Patton Oswalt.
Dan
You people are all too young. You weren’t around when Alvin and the chipmunks came out. They played it over and over and over on almost every radio station. It still makes me cringe every time I hear it and I didn’t like it the first time they played it.
Tonybrown74
@satby:
+1
dmsilev
I do my best to tune out any Christmas music that post-dates Handel’s Messiah. If I’m feeling especially cranky, anything post Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
(and yes, I realize the latter constraint is only about 8 years more stringent than the former.)
daveNYC
I’m fortunate that my current office doesn’t blast out that crap. The previous building I was in started up the loop tape in November and didn’t let up until the New Year.
After about two weeks I hated every single Chrismas song ever made.
Schlemizel
Bruce Springsteen, Santa Claus is Coming To Town
Its A Most Wonderful Time Of the Year
Anything by Andy Williams
Really, after a couple of weeks all of theme get a bit repetitive.
merrinc
Could not agree more. My kids (now 13 and gulp, almost 20) have always had zero interest in it as well. It’s just not funny.
As for holiday songs I dislike, ah, it’s so hard to choose. Any version of Santa Baby by anybody. Jingle Bell Rock because it’s an earworm. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer because it makes me want to hunt down a redneck to punch.
Brian R.
But the correct answer is Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Simon Le Bon: “It’s hard, but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window
Sting and Simon Le Bon: “And it’s a world of dreaded fear
Where the only water flowing is a bitter sting of tears
And the christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom.”
Bono: “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you!!!”
So cheery.
Dreggas
here’s another classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wU0GwyQKSE&feature=related
Schlemizel
@BD of MN:
Crap, why did you have to remind me of that abomination?
If I get an ear worm of that my death will be on your head! :)
dr. luba
Blue Christmas. Let’s get even more depressed.
JPL
I worked retail during the holiday season and I was able to tune out all but one song, frosty the snowman. If this weren’t such an upscale blog, I would share some of the things I wanted to do to that snowman.
ruemara
Fuckinng Happy Elf by Fucking Harry Connick, Jr. I once worked at Borders where I had to hear that fucking song, fucking 12 times in a fucking shift. I’d like to scalp him with his CD. I love most of the Peanuts Christmas album, ya tasteless bozo. Lately though, I’m despising Christmas music more and more. This song, however and the Om for the Holidays album it is on, will always be on my must listen to list.
greylocks
What’s disturbing is how so many of you actually listen to enough of this insipid, low-brow garbage to have an informed opinion.
dmsilev
@JPL: I’ve got a propane torch you can borrow…
saintlywife
@Aet:
I heard an interview with the songwriter where he explained that “Grandma got run over by a reindeer” was his grandfather’s code phrase meaning “Grandma is hung over.” Now I find the song amusing.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
I’ve come to the epiphany that many Christmas Songs are poseur Christmas songs. I mean…they use “Happy Holidays” for God’s sake, even those several decades old! Look at songs like “Christmas Party Hop”! Yeah, they use the dreaded C-word too, but they have “Happy Holiday(s)” too! Who knew the War on Christmas was this pervasive! OMG!!!
@Face:
What shocks me more is the fact that there are people defending this shit as sensible and necessary.
Cris (without an H)
It’s a good point, made by several people here, that it’s often not the song, but the version. Like, I do love “Sleigh Ride” as an orchestral or by Andy Williams, but I don’t care to hear the Ronettes do it. Same with the Crystals version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (which is the version that Springsteen copied, making it even worse).
Amanda in the South Bay
Fuck the Fucking Chimpmunks
elmertfudd
@satby: What you said.
Reindeer roasting on an open fire,
Jackals nipping at your toes,
Yuletide carolers being hung from a spire,
And folks dressed up like commandos…
Citizen Alan
The point of Peanuts, IMO, is that a cartoon about melancholy, anxiety=prone adults would be self-indulgent and boring. By making it about kids, Schultz shows what those grown-up anxieties look like when reflected in the mirror of children who really shouldn’t have such obvious psychological hangups. It’s a way of looking at grown-up issues and perhaps realizing that they’re not as overpowering as one might think.
Also, if you really knew anything about kids, you’d understand the absurdity of a cartoon centered around a happy childhood. Most kids are anxious because most of the adults in their lives are anxious and they reflect this unthinkingly. I was eight when I made the conscious decision that I would never again ask my parents for anything as a Christmas present because a half-heard and misunderstood conversation led me to believe that we were a very poor family. I was 35 before I realized that “poor” for two children of the Great Depression meant that if my dad didn’t get a new job soon, the savings account might be exhausted in six months to a year and we might have to take out a mortgage on that house my parents had paid off when I was two.
elmertfudd
@Brian R.: Yes, the line that Bono sang was really uplifting…
gaz
Fuck christmas. Not christian. Annoying as hell. Makes people broke. If you don’t own a retail outlet christmas exists solely to fuck you over.
Thanksgiving is far closer to an actual christian holiday, origins not-withstanding. It defies commercialization far better than christmas does, and in the end it’s about family, being thankful for what you do have, and being mindful that others may not have what you have. Hence, the closest thing to a xtian holiday we have (at least in spirit)… I’d even hold it up over easter. WTF does an egg laying bunny have to do with shit anyway? heh.
Cris (without an H)
@greylocks: cram it, jerkoff
Amanda in the South Bay
@Cris (without an H):
Sleigh Ride when done properly (by an orchestra) is a classic.
There are a lot of great Renaissance-ish setting for the Missa Hodie Christus Natus Est-Palestrina, Charpentier, etc.
PEP
The overplayed and over-rated Happy X-Mas (War is Over). Any version, but Lennon’s stands out as the worst since he wrote it.
Jules
That “Two Front Teeth” or whatever it’s called makes me wanna gouge my eyes out with a spork.
Same goes for “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”
If grandma is dumb enough to walk in front of a reindeer, she deserves to get run over.
’nuff said.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
The G-d-damned fucking drummer boy, in any version whatsoever, closely followed by “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus” and anything that involves animal noises manipulated into a tune.
daveNYC
@Face: Fuuuuuuu…
And per usual, the comments on the story were making me omnicidal.
KenZ
Peanuts gets better as you get older and more able to remove yourself from your own society and observe it. Intellectually, it’s considered a reaction to post-modernism. Give it time.
handsmile
After about the zillionth hearing each year, Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” does get a wee bit grating.
Also, I think I read somewhere that Hilary Duff’s “Jingle Bell Rock” was used during Guantanamo interrogations.
Citizen Alan
As for Christmas music, I used to be mildly amused by the wit of “Santa Baby.” Then, I heard five different versions, all by otherwise talented singers who for some reason insisted on singing this song in the style of Betty Boop, and it quickly lost its allure.
Cris (without an H)
Billy Squier, “Christmas is a Time to Say I Love You.” Drop that 45 on the railroad tracks.
Dork
@saintlywife: Except the lines that follow are “coming home from our house Christmas eve”, which means she was either drinking while driving, or at best tossing back some roadies in the passanger seat and hand-jobbing Grampa while he toked on his travel bong.
khead
This. I never really realized it til this year, I think. Usually we refuse to listen to them before sometime in mid-December, but this year we tuned in early (T’giving weekend) to one of the THREE local stations playing Christmas tunes round the clock and now I have already had enough.
lamh35
whoever said “Christmas Shoes” is soo right on. The whole song is supposed to make you go aww, but it makes me wanna barf.
A close second and possible equal is “Feliz Navidad”…I hear that song and I just want to throw the radio on the floor.
SteveM
Tie: “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams and “The Man with the Bag” by Kay Starr. Rock and R&B came into being 60 years ago to put the late-model “swingin'” music like this out of its misery.
Laertes
Anything with those goddamn chipmunks.
RSA
Christmas songs don’t usually bug me, except when they’re sung by Frank Sinatra.
Two of my favorite collections by Calvino are Marcovaldo and Italian Folktales; if you ever decide to read Calvino and haven’t hit these already, they’re great.
Libby
I have to go with “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” and “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”
Davis X. Machina
The playlist geniuses who thought that “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues is anything other than a colossal downer, and deserves heavy rotation as a Christmas classic. It’s everywhere, like a rash.
On a more cheerful note: my personal no-one-ever-heard-of-it favorite is “This Time of Year” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
There’s crap – it’s true —
What can you do?
It’s simply spending it with you
That keeps me looking forward to
Lookin’ forward to this time of year
geg6
As absolutely appalled as I am that someone, anyone, could hate on Peanuts, I am even more appalled by pretty much every single Christmas song ever written or recorded. They all suck balls, pretty much equally. The religious ones because, well, they’re religious. And they honor one of the most ridiculous stories ever told. Santa Claus is more believable than that whole virgin birth/nativity/three-kings-following-a-star whopper.
As for the rest, just insipid crap.
I love the winter solstice celebrations, but you can keep the crap music away from me, thanks.
patroclus
I really like “Oh Holy Night”, “Do you hear what I hear”, “Feliz Navidad”, “Noche de Paz” and the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah.
JWeidner
Awww Doug, don’t be hatin’ on Vince Guaraldi. The Charlie Brown Christmas album is actually my favorite of any Christmas albums just because of the jazzy take on some classics and, I suppose, the fact that I loved the TV special growing up.
PIGL
I come down firmly on the side of hating The Little Drummer Boy. Even though (or maybe, specially ’cause) David Bowie did a cover….what was he thinking?
The Little Drummer Girl, otoh, is a fantastic novel.
chrome agnomen
hate them all with a passion. but agree with #18, the chipmunks have their own circle in hell.
rlrr
Sleigh Ride, definitely.
Every almost every orchestra and band I’ve been in has played it, and I’ve played every lame percussion part in it over the years…
Hunter Gathers
Joe Pesci – If It Doesn’t Snow For Christmas
Jeebus H. Tap Dancing Christ that song makes me want to go on a murderous rampage.
pragmatism
Run DMC Christmas in Hollis.
also, too, its dreidel. you trying to start a war on hanukkah?
feral1
If you’re talking ish about any of the Vince Guaraldi music in A Charlie Brown Christmas, then you are dead to me.
Scamp Dog
@merrinc: Peanuts rarely made me laugh, but since I started reading the comics as a child back in the ’60s, they just were something that I always read and enjoyed. More an “old friends from way back when” kind of thing than anything else.
ETA: I think @Citizen Alan nailed it.
I’ll also vote for “Little Drummer Boy” as my most annoying Christmas song.
cathyx
Anything by the Chipmunks or by children, unless they’re the Vienna Boys Choir.
I always hated the Charlie Brown shows. It made me sick how mean everyone was to him.
Rosali
Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto
artem1s
any version of ‘your a mean one, Mr. Grinch’
I didn’t mind the original but then they started covering.
also, pretty much any elevator/vegas orchestrated version of any Christmas or Advent hymn. just.don’t.do.it.
but this guy is classic
http://www.schickele.com/composition/consortchristmas.htm
Amir Khalid
@wapsie:
Hey! I happen to like that one. It’s kind of poignant this year, now that the Big Man has passed on.
There are no Christmas songs that I actually dislike. What I hate is that when the shopping malls in KL get musicians to play them live, it’s always a “jazz trio” featuring some idiot bleating away on a soprano sax like he’s the reincarnation of Kenny freaking G. And none of these guys has figured out that winter songs, like Jingle Bells and Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!, don’t make sense for marking Christmas in these here tropics.
trollhattan
Anything as performed by Mariah Carey. And the grandma, the reindeer running over of, song. Tepid jokes simply don’t get better with the millionth retelling.
cathyx
@geg6: I’m not a religious person, but I think some of the religious christmas songs are some of the prettiest music written.
Tuffy
I hate Peanuts, but it’s not about children. It’s about lonely, disaffected, alienated people.
DougJ
@handsmile:
You know, Jose Feliciano, you got no complaints.
Surreal American
Can’t really focus on bad X-mas songs when I’ve been playing this track all day.
The Arabian Dance from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite by Duke Ellington (arranged by Billy Strayhorn):
http://youtu.be/jRelnWvKXw4
LGRooney
@gaz: Will you shut the hell up!! If word gets out, the fucking marketing pros will descend on that holiday with a rapaciousness not seen since neo-lib econs released the Krakens on our way of life.
Spence
Dominic the Donkey. Full stop. I managed to make it through the first 29 years of life without hearing that crime against decent society, but last year I heard it in a supermarket and I’m convinced it’s not only the most annoying christmas song, but among the most annoying songs of any genre in any period in human history. I exaggerate of course, but I’m not certain it’s by much.
Davis X. Machina
@RSA: Plug for Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees. Why that hasn’t been filmed yet is beyond me.
brettvk
I loathe Christmas. It encapsulates so much of what I hate about my culture. So naturally in my impoverished old age I’ve ended up working for a big box retailer that starts stocking for Xmas in late September and blasts the all-carol radio station throughout the building after Black Friday. If thoughts could kill, the Yuletide Format stations would all be smoking holes.
gaz
Also too,
Fuck every single christmas song with a sharp stick.
Fuck santa with a broken bottle.
Fuck every retail chain.
Fuck the credit card companies.
Even though I couldn’t stand owning a dog (cue the flames), having a mean ass doberman to sick on carolers would almost be worth it.
I propose making the months of november and december into retail blackout months. Buy no useless crap. None.
Montysano
@DougJ:
I see what you did there.
You didn’t ask for favorites, but The Chieftains “St. Stephens Day Murders”, from the Bells of Dublin album and featuring Elvis Costello on vocals, is full of win. In fact, that album and the Roches We Three Kings is about the only holiday music that I can stomach.
Ruth
That Peanuts Christmas song filled me with despair when I was eight years old, and it continues to fill me with despair today. Something about those joyless, high-pitched voices…I can be sitting in a coffee shop in a perfectly good mood, then that song will come on and just like that, my mood is spoiled…
geg6
@gaz:
Heh. I feel the same way. Love me some Thanksgiving and, as an atheist, I love the irony of being so fond of what should be considered the most Christ-like holiday.
The best thing about Christmas is that I get a 2 week break from work to spend with family and friends. Other than that rather large bonus, Thanksgiving is a real holiday. Christmas is not. It’s all about consumerism. And I have no idea what to make of Easter. Probably even more stupid than Christmas and the story is even more absurd, if that is at all possible. Which I don’t think it is.
Catsy
All of them. This is my least favorite time of the year, and the “music” is probably one of the worst things about it, aside from how nearly impossible it is to go out in public without having the holiday shoved down your throat.
But I think I have to reserve particular scorn for the wall of piercing noise generated by those obnoxious Salvation Army bell-ringers who like to camp out at the entrances to grocery stores.
scandi
Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart. It’s depressing, I hate the melody and basically you can substitute any word for Christmas and it would be the same song:
Last Thursday I gave you my heart.
Last August I gave you my heart.
Last Kwanza I gave you my heart.
rlrr
@gaz:
Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity. No one escapes feeling used by society, by religion, by friends and relatives, by the utterly artificial responsibilities of extending false greetings, sending banal cards, reciprocating unsolicited gifts, going to dull parties, putting up with acquaintances and family one avoids all the rest of the year…in short, of being brutalized by a “holiday” that has lost virtually all of its original meanings and has become a merchandising ploy for color tv set manufacturers and ravagers of the woodlands. – Harlan Ellison
Davis X. Machina
@Tuffy: That’s the very reason why I loved Peanuts. As a child, it was supposed to be full of joy and happiness. And simplicity and truth. And it so wasn’t. At that age, your soul hasn’t developed any callouses yet. Everything is painful.
merrinc
What this thread needs is Denis Leary singing Merry Fuckin’ Christmas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4G_qTwgzmk
All the kids go to bed each night to dream what Santa brings ’em
Unless they’re Jewish or Muslim or some other gyp religion…
gaz
@geg6: heh, yeah.
RossinDetroit
After working three holiday seasons in retail (which start way before Thanksgiving), the ONLY seasonal music I want to hear is by Vince Guaraldi. Because it’s actual music by musicians. Yesterday one of the 3rd graders was picking his way through Schroeder’s Theme on a piano and I wanted to hug him.
David in NY
@PIGL: @BO_Bill: @JPL: @ruemara: @daveNYC:
Happy to hear from all the people with the right objection — the piped-in Christmas music, repeated ad nauseum, in retail and office settings. It’s the absolute worst. My particular bête noire is Silver Bells, which, on the fourth repetition, is like spending all day in a dentist’s chair, having him drill little holes in my skull.
Satanicpanic
@PIGL: Joan Jett also covered Little Drummer Boy on a non-christmas album. Still tops my list of the most inexplicable covers ever.
gaz
@rlrr: I so totally fuckin agree with that quote.
Culture of Truth
Indeed, nothing else comes close.
I am a huge Springsteen fan but I can’t stand this either.
David in NY
Oh cripes. Moderation for responding to too many people.
Bondo
Courtney Cox
I love you
You’re so hot
on that show
Worst song: anything with chipmunks or barking dogs
best: really like feliz navidad
LGRooney
I dig Corey Taylor’s Xm@s:
And his Fa-la-la-la-la go fuck yourself! is a classic one-two.
Butch
My sister and I were the only ones in the family who knew the Latin words to “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” and my parents used to make us sing it for the assembled extended family every Christmas eve. Not to mention that I have a singing voice that sounds like geese farts on a muggy day; I’ve hated that song every since.
rlrr
@Davis X. Machina:
Another thumbs up for The Baron in the Trees.
RossinDetroit
@rlrr:
Harlan’s being a trifle harsh there but I agree with the underlying sentiment. Every year I feel like powerful business interests are pulling our strings like marionettes and we dance along oblivious. This works because it was easy to brainwash us when we were kids.
gaz
@LGRooney: Egg nog is the only thing even moderately redeeming about this otherwise evil and sick “holiday”/torture-fest.
Brachiator
The Ihnatko Almanac podcast has an interesting episode about why the movie, White Christmas is craptastic, Occupy White Christmas.
But aside from that, I love the holiday songs. I love the fact that some of the best ones have been written by non-Christians and even (gasp) nonbelievers.
I look forward to the thread of best Xmas songs evah!
David in NY
@Davis X. Machina: I’d forgotten Baron in the Trees, but loved it and The Cloven Viscount when I read them.
Who made the odd comparison of something (Peanuts?) to Calvino, anyway?
Anoniminous
All of the damn things gives me hairballs. The ones that aren’t squarely based on paranoid schizophrenia — “He KNOWS what you’re thinking” “He KNOWS what you’ve been doing” — have singers that can’t sing backed by musicians who can’t play.
The most annoying is that gawd-awfull “I Saw Mommie
HumpingKissing Santa Claus.” I want to use a Time Machine to go back and execute with extreme prejudice EVERYONE associated with it, from the Producer on down through and including the pizza delivery boy.rlrr
@Scamp Dog:
Many (most?) arrangements of The Little Drummer Boy have no percussion. WTF?
jprfrog
A close call between “The Little Drummer Boy” and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”. Mel Torme “Christmas Song” the best, and I am still fond of “Sleigh-Ride” (even after playing Christmas Pops (Boston Pops) for 20+ seasons. In the orchestra, that is.
Montysano
@rlrr:
Yep, that pretty much covers it, and “brutalized” is the proper word.
geg6
@cathyx:
To each their own. Anything religious gets an automatic F from me. Especially anything religious that is forced upon people like me like stupid Christmas music is.
And since many religious Christmas songs originated in the Catholic Church and I have a personal grudge against that particular international criminal conspiracy, I find them especially awful, knowing that institution the way that I do.
If absolutely forced to listen to a Christmas tune (which I always am), I’ll reluctantly sit still for Chrissy Hynde singing “2000 Miles.” And that’s only because Chrissy Hynde is the awesome.
David in NY
I must say that, each Christmas Eve, riding over the river (Hudson) and through the malls to Aunt Sally’s in Jersey, we always put on the all-Christmas music station and hope (as we have since the youngest member was a mere five) to hear Jingle Bells Rock. Don’t know why, we just do.
Exurban Mom
I loathe many of the songs mentioned above, but I lurv this one:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/211037/november-23-2008/a-colbert-christmas–colbert-costello-duet
butler
@Robert: Yes yes, we all know about the supposed “roofie” in “Baby its Cold outside”. Its not a damn roofie. Listen to the lyrics: she asks for another drink, and he makes her a strong cocktail. Its a throwback to a time before roofies, just as the “gay apparel” in “Deck the Halls” doesn’t exactly mean now what it might have meant then.
Please people, hate the song all you want. Lord knows its been covered about a million times and usually not very well. But can we please get passed this outrage about the non-roofie?
Save your outrage for “The Christmas Shoes”.
Beauzeaux
Little Fucking Drummer Boy.
I hate that sappy truly stupid song.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
This is a little far afield, but I’d like to see a comics thread sometime. Bringing up Peanuts made think of this. We get the Washington Post, and today, 12 fucking years after the guy who drew it died, they’re still running lame-O, unfunny Peanuts strips every day. What the hell? It isn’t like Charles M. Schultz still needs the money any longer. And because they’re running mildewed strips he drew 30 years ago, artists who are working today, many of whom draw great strips, don’t get to see their work run in the Post. Also, too, Hagar the Horrible and Beetle Bailey. Are there any less funny strips than these? I read them each day just to see how truly execrable they are, and they never let me down. (Exhibit 1. Worst comic I’ve ever seen.)
DougJ
@feral1:
I actually like the song itself as a jazz standard, just not when the kids sing it.
Surly Duff
“All I Want For Christmas is You” – Mariah Carey. Hell, non-holiday stuff by Mariah is grating.
merrinc
@cathyx:
Agreed. I absolutely love MercyMe’s rendition of Silent Night. It is positively joyful.
UncommonSense
Only a profoundly disturbed personality could dislike the Peanuts Christmas song. What is wrong with you?
handsmile
Re: the Calvino sub-theme of this thread
The Castle of Crossed Destinies, the novel as told through tarot cards, has been my favorite Calvino novel. A meditation on narrative and interpretive possibility. Though there was a time during the late-70s when every other person I knew was reading his Cosmicomics. That has remained a frequent gift. Which reminds me…
Culture of Truth
Indeed one thing to like about xmas is permission to wallow in eggnog, colored lights decorating a tree inside your house and other things which may be deemed infantile.
UncommonSense
I hate Jingle Bell Rock, by the way. That song is the devil.
Yutsano
Where Are You Christmas by Faith Hill. I will literally claw my eardrums out of my skull if I’m forced to hear that song. What dreck.
srv
@DougJ:
You’re just the Rerun of Balloon-Juice
brettvk
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Word. I think it has something to do with the devolution of newspapers; they don’t want to spend money on new artists, and they know their readers are mostly the olds who view Doonesbury with great suspicion and are really, really comfortable with the comic stylings of the Lockhorns.
RossinDetroit
This thread has me thinking that if there was a for real War on Christmas I’d volunteer for it. I’m a tolerant Atheist but I think all of us, Christians included, would be better off if Christmas was toned down about 98%. Okay, FAO Schwarz would suffer but I can live with that.
DougJ
@srv:
I’ll take that as a compliment.
shortstop
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: That would’ve been my comment word for word, but I’d add that “Silent Night” is just gruesome.
@butler: I think Robert was being funny.
I’ve always dug “Good King Wenceslas,” and realized this morning that it’s a fine example of a privileged individual giving a shit about the poor…and going so far as to discommode himself to increase the comfort of said poor person. That’s probably why you never hear it in modern evangelical settings.
rlrr
The reason for the season…
Comrade Javamanphil
@BD of MN: Yep. Christmas Shoes is the ICBM of holiday sentimentality.
RossinDetroit
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Two words:
Marmaduke.
Why?
SenyorDave
The McCartney song (Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time) is the worst.
The best – The Ronnettes “Sleigh Ride” (I’m biased. Ronnie Spector could be singing a Newt for president jingle and I would still love it. That girl could sing!)
rlrr
@RossinDetroit:
Two more words:
Mallard Fillmore
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
Amen. I just loathe all that rum-pa-pum-pum crap.
The Moar You Know
All of them. I hate pretty much every single fucking thing about this hideous and horrible time of the year, but the music is the cherry on the cake of my rage.
The best Christmas experience of my life came over a decade ago, when I was working for…oh, let’s say a “large retail coffee chain”, back before IT saved my life. The day we were allowed to stop playing the soul-destroying Christmas music, I took all the Christmas CDs and drove up to the gun range and shot them all with my Benelli semi-auto. The little shiny bits of CD dust falling through the air, glimmering in the weak winter sunlight was like little heliograph messages from angels telling me that everything was going to be OK.
Waldo
Except for the unbearable torment that is the Italian donkey song, I don’t hate any of them — at least not the first time I hear ’em — and some of them I can’t get enough of. For instance, I can’t get into the holiday spirit till I’ve heard the Kinks’ “Father Christmas” at least once or twice.
RedKitten
I agree with the loathing for “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas”. It’s wretched, as is Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”. The Boss sounds like he’s dry-heaving his way throughout the entire song.
But the one I detest most of all is John Mellencamp’s “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. It’s just horrible. And the kicker is that toneless, shrieking little girl “singing” the same one lyric over and over and over at the end. I love kids, but what she’s doing is NOT fucking cute. It’s awful and painful and needs to be stopped.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Davis X. Machina: It’s not Christmas around my place until my daughter sings “you scum bag you maggot you cheap lousy f—-” to me as we belt this out together. The fact that Fairytale is a massive downer is the entire point and the perfect antidote to holiday saccharin. But, ymmv and that’s cool.
Violet
One of my guilty pleasure songs is “Christmas is All Around” from “Love Actually.” It’s an awful song, a supposed Christmas remake of a supposed hit song, and it’s so bad it’s good. In a bad way.
tamied
Have you heard Pink Floyd’s Christmas album?
It’s called Deck the Wall.
Svensker
Buncha grinches. I love Christmas and most Christmas music, although a lot of the pop stuff gets annoying pretty quickly. I’d like to see the commercialism toned down, of course, but the rest of it is just the bees knees. Lights, smell of Douglas fir, fruit cake, eggnog, mysterious wrapped things under the twinkling tree, the birth of new hope and new light… I love to turn off all the house lights at night and just have the tree lights and my little Swedish candle thingy that makes the chimes whirl around, and think lovely peaceful thoughts, with loved ones close by. Sorry, I loves it.
Svensker
In moderation because of “commerkialism” for gawd’s sake. FYWP.
RedKitten
The Christmas songs I like?
“Go Tell it on the Mountain”, by Mahalia Jackson.
“Pretty Paper” by Willie Nelson
And anything off of the Jim Reeves “Twelve Songs of Christmas” album, solely because I grew up listening to that at Christmas, so the nostalgia factor is strong.
Teacherboy
I don’t know about roofies, but “Baby It’s Cold Outside” really should be called the date rape song.
crosspalms
The thing the Whos sing at the end of the old TV version of the Grinch. Ack.
RossinDetroit
When I worked at Marshall Field’s I dickishly asked the General Manager why we started playing Xmas music so early. She politely replied that many customers like it a lot and it gets them in the holiday mood.
I get that, but those people should not be able to impose their Holiday Moodiness on innocent retail clerks 40 hours a week for 3 months.
Al In The County
The “Peanuts song” you mention is called “Linus & Lucy” and is considered one of the great contemporary jazz pieces of all time. Just FYI.
mattski
Dominic the fucking horseshit Donkey.
Worked at a small supermarket 15 years ago and the manager had a 45 minute long Christmas tape with that song on it. Every 45 fucking minutes 8 hours a day 40 fucking hours a week from fucking black friday till fucking christmas. By Day three I was thinking about ways to fucking kill my self using Cambell Soup Cans. By Week Two i was actively trying to get run the fuck over in the parking lot while collecting fucking carts. Just thinking about makes me want to put a fucking three whole punch through one ear and out the other….
I have some minor negative feelings about that song.
NCSteve
@Citizen Alan:
Agreed. Peanuts is also very much about people, particularly the World War II generation, coming to grips with the massive social, technological and political dislocations of the the 1960s (and, in many ways, never stopped being that until sometime in the 80s).
For a long time, there’s always been one comic strip that kind of captures the American zeitgeist of the the times. Peanuts in the 60s, Doonesbury in the 70s, Bloom County in the 80s, Calvin and Hobbes in the 90s (even though it ended in ’95), Dilbert, Get Fuzzy, possibly Baby Blues thereafter.
Besides often being funny, and sometimes even wise, the really iconic strips are a fascinating window into what people were thinking and feeling at a given time. That’s a big part of what makes cartoons such a deceptively powerful force.
Now all of you people go fucking download the anti-libertarian manifesto known as “A Christmas Carol” onto your ebooks (it’s free!), read it (watching a video doesn’t count), and stop being such prickly asshats about one of the last shreds of warmth and decency we ought to be trying to hold on to in an increasingly ugly world.
But if you’re beyond redemption, there’s always SNL’s lost ending to It’s a Wonderful Life to keep you warm.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/its-a-wonderful-life-lost-ending/2731
J.D. Rhoades
Hark! how the bells
sweet silver bells
All seem to say
throw cares away.
Christmas is here
bringing good cheer
To young and old
meek and the bold
AAAAAGH!
Perfect Master
Imagine tending bar with a jukebox that has a handfull of xmas songs and hearing Grandma Got Run Over 50 times a night with different people laughing at that line over and over and over. Drives ya nuts, I tell you
chopper
most hated song of the holiday season is ‘happy holidays’.
with such fantastic lyrics as “with a whoop-de-doo and hickory dock and don’t forget to hang up your sock”
i mean, WTF is that shit?
MikeJ
Lights, please.
And there were in the same funny papers children going to school, listening to muted trombones by night. And lo, Snoopy came unto them, and they were sore afraid. And Snoopy said unto them, fear not: for behold I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is brought an xmas party. You will find Schroeder leading the band. And suddenly there was with Snoopy a multitude of little yellow birds, dancing to Vince Guaraldi songs and saying, “I’ll kick that football this time.”
And that‘s what Peanuts is all about, DougJ.
Suffern ACE
I had no idea that “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time” was McCartney. I wondered why that thing got played over and over again. It is my least favorite.
Now, there was Christmas Album when I was a kid that had a song on it called “Squirrel’s Complaint.” It would be my Christmas guilty pleasure, but I’ve never found it anywhere except on that album. “I want my Santa squirrel to come down my tree, and bring me a Christmas pine cone.” “Santa’s stuck in the elevator” was also on that album. That Bieber the kids these days have the Jonas brothers to get them through the holidays.
PaulW
Gramma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. It was funny the first 50 times, but now it’s just sad.
RossinDetroit
@NCSteve:
I’m a warm and decent person 24 X 7. I object to being grabbed by the ankles and shaken upside down for the money in my pockets by Big Retail once a year. And the fact that they use religion to do it.
handsmile
@mattski: (#158)
Give the man the Xmas present of his choice! Thanks for the laugh!
PaulW
@MikeJ:
Thank you for reviving my faith in Peanuts Christmas specials.
You know, thanks to that special, I always associate jazz music with Christmas.
freelancer
Barbara Streisand’s version of Jingle Bells. It’s insane. The dumbest Christmas song ever screamed with the passion and intensity that Jefferson Airplane brought to “Somebody to Love”.
RedKitten
Oh, I forgot another good Christmas song.
“The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole. Classic, understated but festive, and Nat’s voice is like a warm blankie for your ears.
Davis X. Machina
@PaulW: I have the Latin lyrics to it somewhere… Avia ā renone calcabatur….
MikeJ
@PaulW: Arrgh! I didn’t notice that WP mangled my second url until the edit window closed. I feel like Charlie Brown.
hamletta
I used to think “Little Drummer Boy” was OK, as long as it was sung by children. Then my adult choir was forced to sing it. For two consecutive Christmases. Hate it now.
But the absolute worst is “Carol Of the Bells”: Merrymerrymerrymerry Christmas! That song always made me want to shoot people, but then I had to sing it, so it’s been upgraded to “nuke it from space.” Fuckin’ Ukranians.
tones
I worked a retail job once and when they asked me ” why are you giving your two weeks notice?” I said –
“I simply can’t take working with these Christmas Carols for 8 hours a day.
That is the only reason.”
I never regretted it.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Most hated? Grandma got runned over by a reindeer. Makes me want to rip out speaker wire.
Right now most loved?
“From early in November to the last week of December I got money matters weighin’ me down…”
I’m broke as hell right now and although my oldest is serving Stateside, she’s still wearing the uniform– so I’m also thinking about those boys and girls who’ll be eatin’ turkey dinner on some mountain top in Pakistan.
shortstop
@Davis X. Machina: How do you feel about Wall of Voodoo’s “Shouldn’t Have Given Him a Gun for Christmas”? I challenge you not to dance.
RossinDetroit
At least we don’t get overloaded with the Christian songs in stores. We have large Jewish and *whispers* Muslim populations so the holiday noise tends to be more generic.
Bex
The Winner And All-Time Champion of Awful: “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas.” Find a link at your own risk if you’ve never heard it.
shortstop
@RossinDetroit: I don’t think minority populations should be allowed to take the axial tilt out of the season that way.
Yevgraf
I hate so much, it is hard to differentiate.
Now, I absolutely love this Jethro Tull tune, Ring Out Solstice Bells.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFZ9TK37E78
Rosalita
@RedKitten:
I like Nat’s Oh Holy Night.
RossinDetroit
@shortstop:
Dude, you should see the bash the Tamils throw for (their) New Year. The music is fantastic!
Soonergrunt
The Holiday Season/Happy Holidays by Andy Williams.
Every time I hear it, I want to punch out my own eardrums with a ball-point pen.
mfbjr
The Christmas Shoes is the worst song ever made. It was playing in the operating room as I was being prepped for a c-section on Christmas Day 2004 and I thought I would loose it completely. I did manage to insist, politely, that the staff change the station immediately, which they did happily.
CaptainFwiffo
I hate that freaking hyped-up version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town, OH YEAH! Saaaaaanta Claus is Comin’ to Town, ALL RIGHT!” I hear that EVERYWHERE. And “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” was funny when I was 12, but please stop.
I, for one, love all the really depressing Christmas songs (with the exception of the sappy country ones like fucking “Christmas Shoes”). The ones where somebody dies are the best (there’s a great one by Prince). A great many people get depressed during the holidays, and I’m one of them. “First Christmas” by Stan Rogers is perfect. I made a mix-album (“Weaponized Christmas”) of the most depressing holiday tunes I could find and there were so many that The Pogues didn’t even make the cut.
“The Gift of the Magi” is the best fucking Christmas story ever, and that’s depressing as hell, and likewise, the best Christmas songs should be depressing.
dogwood
I don’t shop enough or watch enough tv to be annoyed by Christmas music. But my absolute favorite corny Christmas song is Mele Kalikimaka. The Bing Crosby version is a perfect ironic companion piece to his White Christmas.
Aslo reminds me that I love spending Christmas in Hawaii, just like someone else we all know.
rlrr
@RossinDetroit:
That makes Bill O’Reilly sad.
wasabi gasp
All combined, they incite a menacing level of joy.
BGinCHI
Well, the BEST Christmas song ever is the Stones, “Street Fightin’ Man.”
Why do all think it has to be about Christmas?
RossinDetroit
Categories of holiday songs that should DIAF:
Sung by real or fictional animals
Sung by children
About teeth
Comic or humorous
Novelties
Cynical celebrity cash-ins
dogwood
@wasabi gasp:
That’s the most accurate description of the entire season I’ve ever read.
MoXmas
I have a pal who is running a chalenge based on the fact he thinks LITTLE DRUMMER boy is the worst song by a country mile.
All you do is sign up and see if you can last all season without hearing (suffering through) the damn song.
http://www.facebook.com/LittleDrummerBoyChallenge
chopper
@NCSteve:
yeah, but i’m jewish.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Know what you mean. Lived below Miami, FL for 3 years & I could never really ‘get in the Winter spirit’ when I was walking around in shorts & flipflops on 23 December.
kc
I like the Bing Crosby version of “Happy Holidays,” ’cause thanks to Bill O’Reilly every time I hear it I wonder why Bing hated the baby Jesus.
Barney
A couple of British ones we’ve had to endure:
Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin’ Stevens (apostrophe compulsory, I’m afraid; interviewers were expected to call him “Shakin'”). So bland, so unoriginal.
“The Millennium Prayer” by Cliff Richard. So unoriginal, they stole both the words and tune from non-copyrighted sources. And they so wanted to be the ‘final Christmas #1’ of the 20th century, and the first #1 in the 21st. But they weren’t. Ha. The British public still had a little bit of decency. Voted #1 and #2 in polls of all-time worst singles.
RossinDetroit
You know, if I was Satan and I wanted to destroy Christanity I would contrive to make one of its holiest occasions a horrorshow of fake emotion, wasteful spending and painful forced conviviality.
Maybe the nuns were right and there is a Hell.
RossinDetroit
@Barney:
Isn’t some Slade song like Happy Christmas Everyone supposedly a big deal there? I haven’t heard it but Brit colleagues insisted it wasn’t Christmas without Slade.
Violet
@MoXmas:
It is the worst song. Terrible on a multitude of levels. And it’s a “classic,” not a novelty or remake or celeb cash in or faux charity song. It wins.
jackmac
Little Drummer Boy.
Listening to that piece of shit over and over is my idea of Hell. Worst. Christmas. Song. Ever.
shortstop
I enjoyed the Bing/Bowie mashup of “Little Drummer Boy” and I forget what other song once I read that right-wing authoritarian Bing would have fits over that velvet-trousered flit Bowie being so popular.
28 Percent
The Oakridge Boys, Christmas is Paintin’ the Town. It’s… oh G-d, now I’m thinking about it!
AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
JGabriel
@RossinDetroit:
If I were Satan and wanted to destroy America, I would contrive to make one of its major political parties a horrowshow of fake emotion, wasteful spending, and painful forced conviviality …
OMFG! Satan has taken over both Christmas AND the GOP!
.
RossinDetroit
@JGabriel:
SATAN = SANTA
Think about it…
Linnaeus
I can’t drink the haterade being served in this thread, but I can understand where it comes from. Most Christmas music I’m pretty neutral toward, there’s some songs I don’t like at all (“The Little Drummer Boy”) and some songs I rather like (yes, “Carol of the Bells” is one of them). I like the Christmas season generally, and so the music that comes with it is just something I accept even if I don’t always like it.
Best Christmas song for me is “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses. And I’m okay with “Wonderful Christmastime”.
And Peanuts is great.
Scamp Dog
@elmertfudd: Is there any more to that? If not, I will try to make some up. An instant classic!
MikeJ
@shortstop:
A duet is not a mash up.
If Bing had been upset about Bowie I doubt he would have invited Bowie onto his Christmas special.
JGabriel
I gotta say, the undercurrent of trauma, of thinking Mom is cheating on Dad, was always kinda creepy in “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. The paranoia-inducing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” runs a close second on my least favorite Christmas songs.
.
elmertfudd
@Scamp Dog:
Everybody knows the turkey in the missile silo,
Will help to make a city bright,
Tiny tots now they’re all quite aglow,
As the fallout descends tonight…
satby
@RossinDetroit:
Amen!
ThresherK
@khead: I was in Boston the 2d weekend of November, at which point two major-signal FM stations had already gone all-holiday. AN ENTIRE MONTH AGO!
@JWeidner: Also it tickles me that the first exposure that many generations of Americans got to jazz, while not knowing they were getting it, was in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. All the folks who “don’t like jazz” but like that soundtrack.
The study of which songs get played and ignored, year by year, I find fascinating. Apparently my prayers against
“Dominic the Christmas Donkey” have been answered in the western MA/northern CT broadcast market.
“That Holiday Feeling” by SteveAndEydie sounds like a mediocre follow-up to “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (which has
its own kettle of fish).
“Chrissy the Christmas Mouse” is something my wife said she heard on the radio, from Debbie Reynolds and
Donald O’Connor. I will not Youtube it, because they were instrumental in making “Singin’ in the Rain” the glorious accomplishment it was.
Neil Diamond, a Christmas album?
“The Bell that Wouldn’t Jingle” which the reader is invited to find themselves.
However, recognizing that the Russian Jewish immigrant Israel Baline gave us the most popular Christmas song
ever, I want more people with a stake in religion to talk about Hannukah songs. Carole King has a new one that doesn’t make me turn the station in microseconds, which is high praise; beyond that, Barenaked Ladies’ ones isn’t bad. Beyond that, as a Christian-raised sort, I’m not qualified to say, I guess.
Finally, a recommendation: The two Christmas Cocktails CDs are hilarious, full of the kind of tracks one can’t imagine actually existing if they weren’t right their in your hands. Best enjoyed with, yes, some booze.
MikeJ
There’s one particular xmas song that’s really so bad it’s good. I realise that opinions will differ on this, but why should I care what you think?
Hang up your pretty stockings
And turn off the light
Santa Claus is comin’ down your chimney tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXuDvbjtO_s
trollhattan
On the plus side of the ledger, Charles (not Charlie) Brown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5WKVsvLwuM&feature=artist
Davis X. Machina
@ThresherK:
And Mandy Patinkin sings it, in Yiddish, on Mamaloshen.
What a country, America.
Linnaeus
@Al In The County:
I don’t know if that’s the song DougJ’s thinking of, since there’s no lyrics to it and it’s not a Christmas song specifically, even though it is on A Charlie Brown Christmas. He might be thinking of this one instead.
But yes, “Linus & Lucy” is a classic.
EIGRP
@BD of MN: True dat! Xmas Shoes sucks.
trollhattan
@ThresherK:
Another mindboggling collection is “A John Waters Christmas,” worth the price just for “Santa Claus is a Black Man” alone.
gelfling545
Peanuts was never about kids. It is about life (or LIFE) in all its bitter-sweetness. It’s not supposed to be funny so much as to provoke a wry smile and a sigh.
Scott
I don’t know if anybody has mentioned it yet but I found “I Believe in Father Christmas” by Emerson, Lake and Palmer to be somewhat depressing.
ThresherK
@Davis X. Machina: Kudos! I did not know that.
And I’ve read a fascinating book about “White Christmas”.
pk
I heard “It’s Christmas in America” by Pat Benatar, in Kohl’s. Absolutely the worst dreck. I wanted to walk out the store.
EriktheRed
@Maude:
Ever notice, btw, that one of the most famous songs associated with Christmas (Jingle Bells) really doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas?
Svensker
Y’all are complaining about Christmas starting right after Thanksgiving. But, think about it, Christmas in Canukistan starts right after Halloween. With a vengeance, too, dang godless sockalists. Yup, eh?
trollhattan
@gelfling545:
Yup. And the only bonafide “kid” in the strip was Snoopy.
amused
I’m printing out the Harlan Ellison quote and sending it to everyone. First time I’ll send out an xmas card in 15 years!
EriktheRed
@Scott: @Scott:
Actually, I think it’s just Greg Lake.
EIGRP
I’ll also add Manheim Steamroller to the mix. It feels… I dunno… overbearing?
Eric
RalfW
Little Drummer Boy. Hands down least favorite. Not sure why.
Exception: the Bowie/Bing duet with Peace on Earth woven in.
trollhattan
@Svensker:
Costco had the first Christmas crap up before Halloween. They are pretty aggressive with the calendar–probably have the wading pools and waterskis on display right now.
EIGRP
@Robert:
I never thought of it that way. I always figured the girl wanted to stay but had a prior commitment, like work in the morning or something like that.
I like the version that Zooey Deschanel did with Leon Redbone. It seems like it should be a slow song, not one that is rushed (like some of the versions)
Eric
geg6
@NCSteve:
Yeah, because the Yule season in America is all about warmth and decency, what with Bill O’Reilly’s heartwarming war on Happy Holidays, the assault on all non-Christians by militant creches-on-the-public-dime assholes, and rampant consumerism in the name of honoring a piss-poor (probably brown) baby whose adult works and words are ignored by these very same people the other 364 days of the year.
This increasingly ugly world that you mention would be less ugly if we weren’t subjected to so much of this fake and tacky piety, IMHO. Get rid of that and the world suddenly looks much prettier.
Tommy D
Drummer Boy. Well, any bolero, but mostly that one.
dance around in your bones
Well, I just dissolved in tears because I won’t ever hear any Xmas song with my Spousal Unit again….am watching the younger two of three grandkids and leaking water all out my eyes.
Gawd. I’ve gotta getta grip.
Really, folks – love your loved ones while you have them, ya never know when they might go. Crap. sorry for the threadkiller. But I have a sad.
dogwood
@Linnaeus:
I’m with you. And I’m not ashamed to admit I cry every time I hear Judy Garland’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
shortstop
@MikeJ: There’s a second song interspersed with “Drummer Boy.” That’s a mashup.
Crosby reportedly would do anything that made him $, including publicly grinning and bearing people he couldn’t stand.
ETA: Found it — the second song was “Peace on Earth.”
bluemeanies
Anyone else following Jezebel’s December madness for worst x-mas song ever. In the sweet 16 now out of 30 songs (Christmas Shoes and Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas time were given a first round bye on account of being so awful).
shortstop
@EriktheRed: Mmmmm, secular pleasures.
ThresherK
@pk: Is that the same song performed, separately, by Kenny Rogers (totally capable of it), and also by Crystal Gayle (from whom we usually get better)?
If so, ugh. Nothing could make me listen to another version.
dance around in your bones
Ok, instead of Xmas songs I hate, how about one I love, by
The Waitresses: Christmas Wrapping
Ben Cisco
I don’t mind the music. And as far as I’m concerned, Vince Guaraldi is a genius.
__
I DO mind the fact that we start getting pounded with it earlier and earlier every year. One of the “dollar store” chains started it up IN SEPTEMBER. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.
judy
@LGRooney: Oh yes, definitely Andy Williams!!
DougJ
@dance around in your bones:
Thanks for this.
Woodrowfan
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
Don’t want a doll, no dinky Tinker Toy
I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
PurpleGirl
The song I absolutely HATE the most is “The Christmas Shoes.” Hands down the most sad, melancholy, exploitative, tugging at heart strings, and whatever else you want to call it. And phony.
Now to read the thread…
P.S. I don’t want to hear it too much but I like “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” And I like Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song.” Also love “Carol of the Bells.”
bluemeanies
http://jezebel.com/5868103/december-madness-the-unsweet-16-continues
See if the link works now, today is voting on second half of sweet 16
Svensker
@dance around in your bones:
Big hugs. So glad you have the grandkids.
shortstop
@Svensker: What she said, DAIYB.
dance around in your bones
@DougJ: You are welcome. I just loved The Waitresses.
@Svensker: Gads….me too! Sorry, but I just had a sad moment and had to share it with my BJ crew ;)
orogeny
@schtum:
Best version I’ve heard this season.
Davis X. Machina
I’m spending Hanukkah, in Santa Monica,
Wearing sandals lighting candles by the sea.
I spent Shavuos, in East St. Louis,
A charming spot but clearly not the spot for me.
Those eastern winters, I can’t endure ’em,
So every year I pack my gear
And come out here to Purim.
Rosh Hashona, I spend in Arizona,
And Yom Kippa, way down in Mississippa.
But in Decemba, there’s just one place for me.
‘Mid the California flora, I’ll be lighting my menorah.
Every California maid’ll find me playing with a dreidl.
Santa Monica, spending Hanukkah by the sea.
Tom Lehrer. That than which, there is no one whicher.
rea
I see I’m not the first to say this, but “Little Drummer Boy.”
Just imagine, you’ve finally gotten the baby to go to sleep, then in walks some damn kid beating a drum!
Davis X. Machina
@rea: I have a far-away brother with a child for whom, knowing his Mom, we used every year to go through the Lark in the Morning catalog, and find the noisiest ethnic instrument we could afford to gift him with.
Was this wrong?
RossinDetroit
When I sang in a chorus in the ’70s – ’80s I loved doing the Christmas show. Now I wonder how painful it was for the spouses who got dragged to the performance and really didn’t want to hear Carol of the Bells again for the Nth time.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Christopher Lee did a pretty epic version of “Little Drummer Boy” a while back.
Song still sucks, though.
FuzzyWuzzy
@Aet: Conjures up images of the cigarette smoking man from the X files.
dr. luba
@hamletta: Hey, don’t be hating on the Ukrainians. We can’t help it if you english speakers took a perfectly good pagan new years song and ruined it beyond belief.
This is the Ukrainian version.
dr. luba
And this is one of my favorite Xmas albums: Punk Rock Xmas.
Warms the cockles of my heart, it does…….
Djur
The predatory element of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is intentional and was understood as such at the time. The male and female parts are labeled “wolf” and “mouse” respectively in the original score. The implication is that the “mouse” wants to stay, but since she’s not a slut the “wolf” has to twist her arm. Not an uncommon or exceptional concept at the time (and certainly not unheard of today, unfortunately).
The worst Christmastime song is “Christmas Shoes”. If I never hear that atrocity again, it’ll be too soon.
The prophet Nostradumbass
For several years I worked in a bookstore, and at Christmas time, someone else who worked there would put on this Jingle Cats album, every single fucking day. That thing enrages me every time I hear it now.
PurpleGirl
@PIGL: Didn’t he do that as a duet with Bing Crosby? That’s makes it worse to me.
RSA
@Davis X. Machina:
It’s a great conceit, and there are a couple of directors I can think of who could do a good job with it.
MikeJ
@shortstop: Medley, not mashup.
Satanicpanic
OMG I had never heard Christmas Shoes but all the hating on it made me look it up. It’s pretty awful, but I don’t know if it’s much worse than any other cancer country song. The kids singing is creepy though. I’m calling it for Little Drummer Boy, YMMV.
Catsy
@RossinDetroit:
Yes.
I think one of the more grating things about the right’s victim-complex whining about the so-called “War on Christmas” is that there isn’t one–and there ought to be.
dance around in your bones
@Jay B.: That was epic. Why didn’t I hear it back in the day. Grazi.
Fax Paladin
I don’t believe I’ve heard “Christmas Shoes.” Or that donkey song. For which I am eternally grateful.
I have extreme sympathy for people who have to listen to Christmas music 8 hours a day or more. I get antsy just shopping or eating somewhere when some of the more obnoxious music is playing. (My brain is suppressing those memories, making it hard to pick a worst song…)
In terms of antidotes, I’m rather fond of Jonathan Coulton’s “Chiron Beta Prime”…
cckids
I have to join in the hate for the Drummer Boy (before my kids were 6 or so they knew to lunge for the radio to change it if that crap came on.)
One song I have a mixed relationship with is called (I think) “Somethings in the Chimney”. Small child singing, vaguely off-key about how Santa missed her last year, but he’s sure to come this year . . . tho the house got awfully smelly for a while, etc.
It is gross, and strangely funny, always makes me snicker. I suppose because you are thinking it is another cutesy, happy ending song, then you get the line. . “I’ll be waiting up for Santa like I did last year, but my brother says he’s already here. . . and he’s stuck up in the chimney and he never says a word, and he’ll be here every Christmas.” Gets me every time.
luminous muse
Yeah, the rumpa-bum-bummer song.
As a (small) music publisher I have a theory about why mediocre stuff like White Christmas and utter crap like Most Wonderful Time of the Year (and Bummer Boy) supplanted some of the truly great old stuff – some of which is by Handel and Mendelssohn (though my favorite melody is Oh Come All Ye Faithful.)
Theory goes like this: the old stuff is Public Domain and only pays the publishers 10 cents on the dollar compared with the 20th century stuff.
I know it’s uncouth to flack your stuff here, but I expand on this over at my blog on Open Salon on a post “The Deal With Christmas Muse” for any who might care.
R-Jud
@bluemeanies: Yes, I’ve been following the Jezebel brackets.
@Surreal American: I didn’t know this existed until you linked to it. My life is that little tiny bit better, forever. Cheers.
PK
@ThresherK:
Don’t know. This is the one I heard (link below. Had profound words such as God Bless America, one nation under God, hold your babies tight etc etc. Rarely have I heard something so sickeningly sentimental. I would challenge anyone to come up with something more nauseating!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRxmyKhXjig
Kilkee
@Montysano: Excellent calls on Chieftains and Roches. Then there’s a bluegrass CD of Christmas music (name of which escapes me) that rounds out The Tolerable.
dance around in your bones
@Montysano: The Roches rock. Also, the Hallelujah Chorus…anytime, anywhere (excuse me, by The Roches!)
canuckistani
Fuck the Little Drummer Boy with his own drumsticks.
But Vince Guaraldi does go a long way to making a holiday bearable. The melancholy suits my own Christmas mood.
Kilkee
@Kilkee: “Christmas Grass,” perhaps?
Scott
@EIGRP: I like the Deschanel version too; although it may be because I associate it with one of my favorite Christmas movies: Elf.
shortstop
@MikeJ: Well, at least now you know there were two songs involved. ;)
Hmmmm, but I would argue that since the two songs were sung simultaneously, it’s more of a mashup than a medley — the latter is multiple songs (or, more usually, portions of songs) sung in succession.
Let’s open it to the floor! What say you, BJers?
shortstop
@cckids: An Edward Gorey Christmas. Tasty.
acallidryas
Last Christmas, hands down. Do They Know It’s Christmas is also horrible, but I find I cam easily ignore it, whereas Last Christmas has an irrititating way of worming into my brain and playing itself even hours later.
p.a.
hate the little drummer boy
like this
Cassidy
That horrendous Mariah Carey song. She has no talent and creeps out once a year to drive me crazy. And any country Christmas song that doesn’t involving drinking.
PurpleGirl
@Paul in KY: Just think, Jesus was really born in the Middle Eastern spring season. And they don’t have snow… All that weather stuff is appropriate to northern Europe, Scandinavia and the British Isles. And Canada and the northern USA.
TimC
This one is local to the area. It’s called “Christmas in the Northwest” and it’s got all the usual flaws. Horrid lyrics, terrible melody, and above all else absolutely no sense that the song really has anything to do with the northwest other than including the word northwest in the song.
robuzo
Living in Japan Tatsuro Yamashita’s “Christmas Eve” drove me crazy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGiIe8qxyYE&feature=related
PurpleGirl
@dogwood: As good as her singing is, that song has always sounded melancholy and sad to me. It depresses me.
PurpleGirl
@Satanicpanic: The year that thing came out, it seemed to get played several times an hour. I began to bring CDs to the office so as to avoid the radio.
Tone in DC
The stores here were displaying xmas stuff by Columbus Day. Spare me.
Amir Khalid
@FuzzyWuzzy:
The Christmas song I associate with der Zigarettenraucher is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, which plays at the beginning of a Christmas-season scene in the episode Musings Of A Cigarette-Smoking Man. (Yes, I have the DVDs, all nine seasons.)
Comrade Mary
The best version of Jingle Bell Rock EVER. I shit you not.
Amir Khalid
Is there to be no love for Spinal Tap’s Christmas With The Devil?
Kathy in St. Louis
My favorite is White Christmas by the Drifters. Fabulous. Gene Autry’s Here Comes Santa Claus and Burl Ives Frosty the Snowman are on just a few thousand times too often.
pseudonymous in nc
@RossinDetroit: Slade and Wizzard. Both came out in 1973, and they’ve been part of the canon ever since. Unlike that xkcd cartoon pointing out how Americans suck up Boomer stuff for Christmas, the standard template for British pop music is 70s/80s.
On ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ and its creepiness, there’s this (British) take which I like.
ThresherK
@PK: Sounds like the same one. I am not clicking on your link. A Purple Heart, for Taking one for the Team, will be materializing out of your USB port shortly.
Death Panel Truck
@Ruth: They have medication for that now.
dance around in your bones
I just want to point out the excellence of The Waitresses, especially “I Could Rule The World, If I Could Only Get The Parts” just for those who are unfamiliar with them.
Ruckus
Anything christmas/holiday related. ANYTHING.
And no I’m not being a grinch. Most of them make me feel like I’m going to go into a diabetic coma, just from listening. I used to call them Karo syrup songs. Too much sweet that doesn’t taste good and is horribly sticky so you can never get away from it.
Hungry Joe
“The Dreidel Song,” because when I was a kid they’d have Christmas assemblies at school. After 18 Christmas songs a teacher would announce, “And now our Jewish students will sing ‘The Dreidel Song,’ ” and all eight or nine of us would get herded onstage to warble that goddam little kids’ sing-songy crap. Agonizing, I tell you, agonizing.
opie jeanne
@Brian R.: YES!!! That’s THE worst song Christmas song ever!
opie jeanne
@Citizen Alan: Eartha Kitt sang Santa Baby the first time I heard it.
opie jeanne
If no one has mentioned it yet, Elton John’s Step Into Christmas is fairly awful, but there is a recording that has driven me from more than one store. Michael Jackson’s Christmas recordings when he was a kid and apparently tone deaf for a while.
opie jeanne
@Hungry Joe: They didn’t single out the Jewish kids to sing that when I was a kid, we all sang it, along with everything else. Sometimes we sang Mele Kalikimaka because that was even more exotic.
gaz
@Violet: Maybe. But I really liked the movie itself.
(risking serious flames) but Love Actually actually does the whole “whimsical, heart-felt romantic, comedy” thing pretty damned well, if you ask me, and I generally hate most romantic comedies that are made stateside. Generally sappy, derivative crap. As far as “romantic” I’m biased towards movies like Things We Lost In the Fire, and Y Tu Mama Tambien. (And Your Mother Also – in english it sounds creepy, but it makes sense in spanish)
Anyway, props for the reference, I’ll have to dig that movie up for when my spouse returns from her walkabout in buttfark, Oaxaca…
K488
@Robert: Maybe this was already referenced (303 comments?!?), but this song was originally written by Frank Loesser to sing with his first wife at parties – yes, it’s creepy, but especially so when sung by Miss Piggy and Mikhail Baryshnikov (with Miss Piggy taking the lead) or, even worse, Mary Martin singing the lead to her son, Larry Hagman. Apparently Mrs. Loesser the first had a rather negative reputation amongst the couples friends, and was known as the Evil of two Loessers. Please forgive if this duplicates a post out there among the 200’s
gaz
@shortstop: Didn’t 2 of his sons commit suicide?
Can’t say I blame them.
errr- Bing, not Bowie
gaz
@dr. luba: I wish my heart had cockles. Lucky bastard. Not sure why. But somehow, I feel like I got screwed.
opie jeanne
@freelancer: One of my childhood favorites was Peter Ustinov’s narration of the Nutcracker, with lyrics by Ogden Nash. My mother bought the record around 1960 and we just about wore it out. The other side is Between Birthdays. We were little kids and thought it was hilarious.
opie jeanne
@mfbjr: Oh Gawd! I went and looked at the lyrics to that excrescence. Jebus.
I like Christmas. I like Christmas music that doesn’t sound forced like so much of the modern stuff does.
One of my favorite new-ish recordings is An Yoolis Night by Anonymous Four. Strangely wonderful ancient songs sungs by a very talented quartet.
opie jeanne
@dance around in your bones: I’m sorry this made you cry and I’m so very glad you have grandchildren.
opie jeanne
@Davis X. Machina: I did similar with my nieces. It was payback for the things my darling sister sent my kids a few years earlier.
uila
Louie Louie?
Nutella
@debcha tweets:
4jkb4ia
“Silver Bells”. Not even close.
4jkb4ia
DougJ, if you mean Donnie Hathaway’s “This Christmas”, that is actually tolerable.
“And this Christmas will be a very special Christmas for me..
DA da da da da da da da da da da da”
4jkb4ia
This thread was wonderful. It had to be said. It was glorious to see the Christmas curmudgeonliness spread out over 300 comments. dance around in your bones, one of the redeeming features of Christmas is being with family, and I am very sorry.
Surly Duff
F you to all who made me go listen to Christmas Shoes to find out what the fuss was all about. Luckily, youtube was kind enough to suggest this Patton Oswalt routine that decimated the song better than I ever could.
Froley
The Sufjan Stevens Christmas music box set is the best. He makes the classics better and the originals are great (“That Was the Worst Christmas Ever” is my favorite — “our father yells/throwing the gifts in the woodstove”).
drummerboy
thread corrections:
@mikej – a medley plays songs consecutively. The Bing/Bowie duet sings two songs simultaneously. Not a medley. (not a mashup either)
@cassidy, Mariah Carey has no talent? Your ears are wired incorrectly. Listen to her nail a quintuple high who knows what in O Holy Night. You might not like her, but the girl’s got pipes.
Do they know it’s Christmas is not only the worst xmas song, it might be the worst song ever. It’s borderline sociopathic. There should be a thread devoted to just how fucked up a song it is, from conception to hit status. You could write a book.
Also, The Little Drummerboy is awesome.
Steve2
Christmas Shoes was a TV special starring Rob Lowe.
I secretly believe half the Christmas songs out there are about child abuse. Two Front Teeth HAS to be.
Lex
@geg6: Yes, 2000 Miles is full of WIN.
I also recommend John Fahey’s Christmas album — just solo acoustic guitar, very tasteful. Although some of the pieces are actually fairly modern, the whole feel ranges from Renaissance to Victorian England, just a slower, more soothing pace, place and time.
daize
Mary Did you Know — Kenny Rogers and Wynona. Most maudlin, not to mention stupid, country Christmas song.
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?
As a former, non-practicing, lapsed, partial (still scarred from 12 years of school) Catholic, these lyrics seem oddly insulting and presumptuous.
low-tech cyclist
I’ll add my voice to the extensive anti-“Little Drummer Boy” chorus.
But I haven’t seen any mention of John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” here, and it deserves some ridicule, at least.
I mean, take the opening line: “So this is Christmas.”
Yes, John, this is Christmas. You’ve seen it before.
And then: “And what have you done?”
This line is a total non sequitur. This rhetorical question not only is never answered, there’s nothing in the rest of the song that has any relation to it.
“Another year over, and a new one just begun.”
No, John, that’s New Year’s. The old year may be essentially over at Christmas, but the new one has NOT just begun.
Maybe he really hasn’t seen Christmas before.
Jesus Christ on a dromedary, what a stupid song this is. Paul wasn’t the only Beatle whose solo career showed just how badly he needed his old bandmates.