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Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Petty moves from a petty man.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Fight them, without becoming them!

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

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Hot air and ill-informed banter

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You are here: Home / Music / Christmas music thread

Christmas music thread

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I like to do this every Christmas:

What’s the most annoying Christmas song you heard this season?

I always want to pick something other than “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas”, but it is just the very worst. Blows the competition away.

What’s a good new Christmas song you heard that you hadn’t heard before?

I’ll go with Man With The Bag, done by Kay Starr.

Favorite newly heard version of an old Christmas song?

Joe Pass doing No Place Like Home For The Holidays.

Favorite Christmas song that you didn’t know was a Christmas song before?

Go Tell It On The Mountain. I like The Wailers version the best.

How about you?

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  2. 2.

    大 芒果

    Over the Rhine from Cinncinati area have excellent holiday songs check them out…I especially love North Pole Man….a bluesy speakeasy song….

  3. 3.

    Gemina13

    “Wonderful Christmastime” blows chunks.

    I haven’t heard any good new Christmas songs.

    I recently heard This Temptation’s version of “Carol of the Bells” mashed up.with Melania’s Christmas video. Thought the video was creepy and funny as hell, but I’m intrigued by the band.

    There’s an old song titled, “The Moon Shone Bright” (old enough to be referenced by Shakespeare) that I heard playing from an ice cream truck in Phoenix. I never knew it was a Christmas song until I heard it performed by the Quadriga Consort.

  6. 6.

    Nicole

    I hate Harry Connick Jr’s. “Happy Wooden Soldier March” or whatever that horrible assault on my ears is called.

    My husband and I got into an argument about “Jingle Bells,” which I said is a dirty song about drinking and sex. He disagreed; I pointed out the final verse and he still disagreed. We later heard a (very fine) version of it by Dean Martin, which I felt supported my claim, but he said you can’t count anything sung by Dean Martin because he made every song sound like it was about sex.

    And then we had to explain our entire conversation to the seven-year-old, who, I fear, has been scared off from “Jingle Bells” for life.

    Jingle Bells- NOT a Christmas carol. Dirty song about going out to get some action in that one-horse open sleigh. Hopefully before the jostling of a trotting horse and all that alcohol makes the stomach too upsot.

  8. 8.

    James E. Powell

    I hate quite a few Christmas songs, but thanks to many advertisers, Garmin first among them, I hate the Carol of the Bells more than any other. A close second is Do They Know It’s Christmas? which isn’t just a bad song but an embarrassment. And they’ve done re-makes of it!

  9. 9.

    raven

    JINGLE BELLS
    (Vietnam War Version)
    Dashing thru the mud,
    In a jeep that should be junk
    Over the fields we go,
    All of us are drunk.

    Wheels on dirt roads bounce,
    Making asses sore
    Lord, I’d sooner go to hell,
    Than finish out this war!

    Oh, jingle bells, mortar shells,
    V.C. in the grass
    We’ll have no Merry Christmas cheer
    Until this year has passed.

    Oh, jingle bells, mortar shells,
    V.C. in the grass
    Take your Merry Christmas cheer
    And shove it up your ass!

    Jungle bells, mortar shells
    VC in the grass;
    Take your bamboo Christmas tree
    And shove it up your ass!

    Dashing thru the sand,
    Got no one horse sleigh,
    Grease gun in my hand,
    Blasting all the way.

    I’m hornier than hell,
    I’d like to bob some tail,
    But VC, man, is number 10,
    And Mama San won’t sell.

    HO, jingle bells, mortar shells,
    Charlie’s in the grass;
    Take your bamboo Christmas tree
    And shove it up your ASS!

  10. 10.

    Nicole

    I do like “Thanks for Christmas,” by XTC. Also the entire Partridge Family Christmas Card. Shut up. I don’t care. I like it and all its glorious early 1970s-ness.

  12. 12.

    p.a.

    Go Tell it On the Mountain: Mahalia
    Christmas at KMart: Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band
    The Bells of Dublin (album): The Chieftains

  13. 13.

    mad citizen

    Jingle Bell Rock is quite bad–done by Bobby Helms, a fellow Hoosier. I wanted to say I saw him singing it on TV at the Indy Christmas “tree/Monument” lighting ceremony, but I see he dies in 1997. Maybe I’m remembering one of his last performances.

    In the last several years I’ve come to appreciate McCartney as an absolute musical genius. But it is funny how many awful songs he has written and released. Haven’t heard his this year yet–usually I hear that one in a store.

    I’ve been watching Bing/Bowie and Will Ferrell/John C Reilly’s LIttle Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth this week.. I guess that is my go to tune, along with the Pogues Fairytale of New York. When I come across my Dylan Christmas CD, I will play that to be amazed and appalled at the same time. If you want to hear some absolute croaking, play his “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”.

  18. 18.

    joel hanes

    The Little Drummer Boy, tempo largo or slower, is my very least favorite, worse even than Spike Jones’s All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth, or anything by Burl Ives.

    Favorites include Patapan, Zum Zum Zum, Mary Did You Know (Pentatonix),
    Coventry Carol, and The Boar’s Head Carol.

  19. 19.

    debbie

    It’s not new, but the only music that gets me in the Christmas spirit is Weezer’s Christmas EP.

    Then what keeps me in the spirit is listening to the BBC’s broadcast of Nine Lessons and Carols from Bath Cathedral on Christmas Eve Day.

  20. 20.

    eemom

    Yup, McCartney should be shot for that godawful piece of shit.

    Also hate the Eagles whiny ass Please Come Home for Christmas.

    And any version of fucking Felice Navidad.

    On a slightly different note, though I don’t quite HATE it, Bob Seger’s version of Little Drummer Boy annoys the crap out of me, because he fucks up the lyric that follows “Shall I play for you/par um pum pum pum.” The correct lyric is “Mary nodded,” but Seger sings “Then he nodded.” That drives me crazy. Newborn infants don’t fucking NOD.

  22. 22.

    Shell

    Favorite newly heard version of an old Christmas song?

    “Is that you, Santa Claus?”

    “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch”

  24. 24.

    mai naem mobile

    I just don’t give a flying fuck about Christmas, especially this year. Lots and lots of Xmas songs I hate. White fucking Christian for a start. Any of the country Christmas songs should be banned. The 9nly songs I like are Billy Squiers Christmas is A Time To Say I Love You and Boney Ms When A Child Is Born and John Lennon War is Over.

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    Silent Night.

    Because fuck those religious thieves who stole the Solstice Celebration as their own.

  26. 26.

    swiftfox

    I have minimal exposure to pop Christmas songs and intend to continue that way. They were all burned into my head by listening to too much AM radio. Bruce Cockburn’s Three Ships is good. Want instant Christmas spirit? Go classical. Most choral stuff is too stodgy but anything with guitar or harp works well. Or listen to Duke Ellington’s version of the Nutcracker.

  27. 27.

    Ol'Froth

    I can’t stand Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (war is over). I don’t mind the Lennon part, but the screeching off-key childrens’ chorus sets my nerves on edge.

  29. 29.

    ThresherK

    I can’t stand Dominic the Donkey.

    Generationally, there’s a lot of careful picking to be done in the era of music after the Big Bands (c. 1947) and the rise of rock ‘n’ roll for Christmas (Elvis’ album with Blue Christmas, 1957). Some of the worst stuff came out then, in songs, and in arrangements.

    —

    The Jackson Five’s Up on the Housetop never fails to charm. Fun fact: That song is the second secular Christmas song ever, preceded by Jingle Bells. Also, the one we’ve all been listening to by Gene Autry all these years uses the wrong chords at two parts in the chorus, making it less interesting to the ear.

    —

    Also if you’re sick of the twenty-five songs allowed on the radio Maine Public Radio has a classical holiday feed which is top-notch.

  34. 34.

    Nicole

    @ThresherK:

    Jackson Five’s Up on the Housetop never fails to charm. Fun fact: That song is the second secular Christmas song ever, preceded by Jingle Bells.

    That makes it the first. JINGLE BELLS IS NOT A CHRISTMAS SONG. IT’S A DIRTY, DIRTY SONG ABOUT DRINKING AND SEX.

    Debauchery aside, “Jingle Bells” was actually originally a Thanksgiving song. No, really. I looked it up. On Wikipedia, so it must be true.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    I was listening to “Ozzy’s boneyard” on XM radio today ( free trial with my new car otherwise I never would have the service ). They were playing heavy metal versions of Christmas songs … Picture motorhead and scorpions singing carols .

    It was awful. I mean I love that channel but I cannot do heavy metal Christmas carols

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses is one I enjoy.
    “Adeste Fideles” (in Latin, of course), which is interesting, since I’m an atheist.
    “Stille Nacht”

    I have to admit, raven’s version of “Jingle Bells” is pretty interesting.

    And, for some reason, the Hallmark-card commercial version (from 20 or 30 years ago) of “O Holy Night” gets me choked up. Probably some unresolved childhood issues, or a serious disorder appearing in DSM-V

    ETA: Oh, yeah, and stuff from John Waters’s “Christmas Album.”

  40. 40.

    Schlemazel

    @Mike in NC:
    Come sit by me, we have something in common.

    How about Springsteen singing Santa Claus is coming to town? I’d like to say his is not the voice for the song but that would bee to kind. It sucks holly balls

    @tybee: looks like we got us a party!!

  41. 41.

    ThresherK

    @Nicole: Well, I’m not gonna say what is and isn’t, but the Wikipedia article for Up on the Housetop refers to William Studwell’s The Christmas Carol Reader in stating that Jingle Bells is a Christmas carol.

    Now that two Wikipedia articles are shown to contradict each other, the universe will explode.

  42. 42.

    AliceBlue

    A few of my faves:

    The Christmas Song – Stevie Wonder and India Arie
    Cool Yule and Is That You Santa Claus? – Louis Armstrong
    Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight With You) – Ramones

    If I never hear any of these again it will be too soon:

    The Little Drummer Boy ( any version)
    I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (also any version)

    Choral versions of these are beautiful:

    In Dulci Jubilo
    Seven Joys of Mary
    Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

  45. 45.

    eemom

    Then of course there’s Holy Night. I like the versions that include the lyrics

    Truly He taught us to love one another
    His law is love and His gospel is peace
    Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
    And in His name all oppression shall cease

    One can dream.

  46. 46.

    lamh36

    What’s the most annoying Christmas song you heard this season? “Christmas Shoes” It’s so OBVIOUSLY an emotional hand grab…hate the entire damn song and they even made it into a movie…bleh

    What’s a good new Christmas song you heard that you hadn’t heard before? Uh…not many new one older than a decade…soo.. pass, but I’ll say my FAV new classic: toss up between “All I Want For Christmas” and “Every Year, Every Christmas”

    Favorite newly heard version of an old Christmas song: “Please Come Home For Christmas” – Aaron Neville

    Favorite Christmas song that you didn’t know was a Christmas song before?     Um… “Hallelujah” (is that a Christmas song) and maybe Ave Maria… I guess

    Now for my own question: FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONG (one that I love no matter the version, but I do have a fav) Oh Holy Night – Tevin Campbell

  48. 48.

    Schlemazel

    @phein58:
    OK, the exception that proves the rule. Although as a Minneapolitan I have to say the address she says she lives at is not right. There is a pendant for ya.

  49. 49.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Hadn’t heard Otis Redding’s version of Merry Christmas Baby until this year, but it’s all kinds of awesome.

    My favorite classic old Carol is Good King Wenceslas.

  51. 51.

    Sab

    I have an almost four year old granddaughter. I found the most amazing stuffed toy hippopotamus at the grocery store. I had to buy it. It was two feet long and had amazingly cynical eyes.

    So now we have to be singing “I wish I had a hippopotamus for Christmas” so that the poor kid will understand why her grandmother gave her a stuffed hippo for Christmas.

  52. 52.

    MCA1

    I have a rule for my kids – the radio in my car will not, under any circumstances, be turned to the shit pop Xmas music station until December 15. Period. And the station is changed the moment they get out of the car for school.

    I counted one year about a decade ago, and over the course of November and December I heard Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree 28 times. 28! The next year I counted snippets of Jingle Bell Rock and got 35. And that’s a person actively avoiding non-choral and secular holiday music like it’s the fucking plague. I don’t listen to You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Space Oddity and Over The Hills And Far Away and Into The Mystic that much in a decade, much less one 6 week period.

    And they’re terrible songs, these Christmas tunes, by and large, if you actually break them down. Infantilizing lyrics, cheesy melodies, nothing interesting going on musically.

    So, whining over, Harold Arlen wrote Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and it’s poignant and has some nice melancholy chords. Mela Kalika Maka is pretty catchy and it’s hard to argue with Bing Crosby’s voice. Also echo sentiments above about Stevie Wonder and Someday at Christmas. The recent Andra Day duet is very good.

    To sort of contribute a little to Doug’s request list, I found the She And Him Christmas album from a few years ago to be surprisingly appealing. Straightforward and simple renditions without all the bullshit gloss and faux gravity that plagues so many modern covers of these songs.

  55. 55.

    Schlemazel

    I do have to admit Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” caused certain stirings in my teen self that gave me jolly thoughts at CHristmas

  62. 62.

    oatler.

    My local Yavapai Co. radio station has been nonstop carols, exposing me to many Carpenters Xmas songs I didn’t know I hated until now.

  63. 63.

    --bd

    @mad citizen: The best Bowie / Bing parody was done by Dave Foley and Joe Flaherty on Dave Foley’s The True Meaning of Christmas Specials done for the CBC about 15 years ago.

  64. 64.

    Bill Arnold

    I’ve always been irritated by Santa Baby, due to an allergy to parasitic gold-diggers (even tongue-in-cheek; never been burnt, just like non-manipulative (play is OK) independent women(people)), and also as an easily caught earworm. (Lately have another non-Christmas song as a general purpose de-earwormer, not sharing it, reasons. :-) )

    Grand total: $1,167,854,838.80
    As a point of reference, that puts “Santa Baby” at 171 on the list of countries by GDP, between the Gambia and Liberia. Seems reasonable. Merry Christmas!

  66. 66.

    Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)

    I hate most Christmas music, ESPECIALLY Holly Jolly Christmas (ugh) but for some reason I get a kick out of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”.

  67. 67.

    Schlemazel

    Why did Der Bingle never sing the first verse?
    The sun is shining, the grass is green
    The orange and palm trees sway
    There’s never been such a day
    In Beverly Hills, LA
    But it’s December the 24th
    And I’m longing to be up north

  68. 68.

    jk

    The most underrated and underappreciated Christmas song has to be “Christmas” by The Who.

    “Wonderful Christmastime” is not only the worst Christmas song, but truly one of the worst songs ever recorded period.

  69. 69.

    NoraLenderbee

    Jingle Bell Rock practically made me punch the dashboard this morning. Also, they’re not terrible songs, but after the 10 millionth rep I never want to hear Winter Wonderland or Sleigh Ride again.

  71. 71.

    Nicole

    @ThresherK: Well, sure, but that has a publication date on that site of 1995. According to Snopes, Jingle Bells didn’t become really associated with Christmas until the 1940s, when Bing Crosby did a version with the Andrews Sisters.

    In all fairness, the Thanksgiving story is a bit apocryphal. The story goes Pierpont wrote it for his father’s Sunday School’s Thanksgiving performance, but come on. Those lyrics would NOT have been appropriate for kids in the 1850s to sing in church.

    Some think Pierpont wrote it while experiencing his first snowless winter in Georgia (he was from New England), which, I guess would make it the 19th Century version of “White Christmas.”

  72. 72.

    Schlemazel

    @jk:
    Lennon and McCartney wrote garbage without each other. Paul’s was dreadful pop crap & WC was the worst of a lot of drewk.

  74. 74.

    dimmsdale

    Not a Christmas carol, but a Christmas story–involving a bunch of young carolers in an open-air market in California, singing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”–and who should be sitting nearby but Mel Torme, the guy who wrote the song. The telling of the story is wonderful too, go read it–a perfect holiday uplift. Link: Enjoy!!

  75. 75.

    Schlemazel

    @NoraLenderbee:
    Really many of them are not horrible by themselves, a few are even good music. The problem is that there really are less than 100 Christmas songs and even with multiple versions starting at Thanksgiving & running till 12/25 means they have to repeat each one 200 times. Stores that start them on Nov 1 just make it that much worse.

    Imagine the top 40 songs from your HS graduation year. You probably liked a lot of them but if you had to list to them over and over again for 30 straight days every year you would hate each one.

  76. 76.

    Waldo

    I never get tired of this tearjerker:

    Father Christmas, give us some money
    We got no time for your silly toys
    We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
    We want your bread so don’t make us annoyed
    Give all the toys to the little rich boys

  78. 78.

    Central Planning

    @lamh36:

    “Christmas Shoes” It’s so OBVIOUSLY an emotional hand grab…hate the entire damn song and they even made it into a movie…bleh

    +100. I can’t stand that song.

    I like many of the songs that Harry Connick Jr. did on a Christmas album. It Must Have Been Ol’ Santa Clause and I Pray On Christmas are two of that I like the most because they aren’t the traditional songs and he wrote them.

  80. 80.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Schlemazel: I thought I was the only one who hated the Springsteen one.

    Things that could have been sung by carolers in the nineteenth century I usually like.

    On the cornier side, I really like Malikalikamaka and Hawaiian Christmas Day.

  81. 81.

    ThresherK

    @–bd: Wait, Joe “Count Floyd” Flaherty has been making stuff and I haven’t heard it? Excuse me for a couple hours.

    @Schlemazel: Irving Berlin didn’t get to be the most popular songwriter of several generations by ignoring the public, and he realized that Pearl Harbor changed the entire emotional cast of the song. Let’s face it, if Holiday Inn were a 1939 picture, it’d be different.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    @Schlemazel

    Can put up with hearing about grandma and the reindeer a heckuva lot more than those songs about Chet’s nuts or Mark the hare-lipped angel.

    :)

  84. 84.

    NeenerNeener

    I have weird taste in Christmas music. I love every version of “Some Children See Him” I’ve ever heard, from George Winston’s piano version through Dave Grusin’s jazz to James Taylor’s choral version.

    I also love every Bob Rivers “Twisted Christmas” album that ever came out. I remember hearing “Who Put the Stump” the first time while I was driving my niece around, and laughing so hard I was crying. I’m lucky I didn’t cause an accident I was laughing so hard.

  87. 87.

    Jeffro

    @DesertFriar: I do love that dropkick Murphys song !

    Also good is Rudolph the red nose reindeer by the smithereens (Pat RIP)

    And finally I still like to get out the original “a very special Christmas” CD A few times every holiday season . I think it’s for the memories as much is for the quality of the songs … and “Christmas in Hollis” always throws my kids for a loop ?

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    What’s the most annoying Christmas song you heard this season?

    I particularly hate “Last Christmas”, probably because it doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas except as a setting for a particularly insipid song.

  91. 91.

    Kirk

    Hippopotamus for Christmas will make me turn off the music or leave the room (or both) if at all possible. Not sure why it gets my goat as there are several worse (already listed).

  92. 92.

    cgordon

    Years ago I had a cassette tape of a Christmas concert from Sweden sung by some angelic choir of adolescent girls. I’ve been trying to find something like that for years. It would break your heart.

  94. 94.

    Nicole

    @–bd:

    The best Bowie / Bing parody was done by Dave Foley and Joe Flaherty on Dave Foley’s The True Meaning of Christmas Specials done for the CBC about 15 years ago.

    Your comment sent me immediately to YouTube to view. That was… very unusual. I laughed a lot. Thank you.

  95. 95.

    rekoob

    Soma FM’s Christmas Lounge has some trippy versions of the old familiars and makes for agreeable background music.

    For what it’s worth, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is broadcast live on the BBC (via the World Service and others) from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, every Christmas Eve. The soloist of the processional hymn, “Once in Royal David’s City”, is chosen, by tradition, by the Choirmaster at the entry to the Chapel at the time of the broadcast. Talk about pressure!

    It’s free to the public, as long as you’re willing to wait to enter. Typically, you need to arrive by 10a for admittance at around 3p for the 4p (GMT) service. I’ve done it thrice and would do it again in a heartbeat.

  99. 99.

    Barbara

    Once upon a time when I was in college I had a job working a lottery machine over Christmas break and I had to get there by 7:00 in the morning. I used to sit in my car and listen to the radio if I got there early, and I heard a version of this song by Peter Paul and Mary and I still remembered it more than 25 years later and found it on Youtube. I hope the link works.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pZkNsVx9IA

  101. 101.

    mai naem mobile

    I haven’t even heard half of the songs in this thread. What the hell is Hippopotamus for Xmas?

  104. 104.

    ThresherK

    @Amir Khalid: There are many schools of thought on the subject. For secular, some words like Christmas and Santa are giveaways. Then you have your Winter Wonderland sorts, which people don’t want to hear after New Year’s, but don’t say Christmas in it.

    And then there are vague songs we can’t figure out. Frosty the Snowman may be recorded with “I’ll be back again some day” or “I’ll be back on Christmas Day”. Hell if I know!

  107. 107.

    Schlemazel

    @NotMax:
    From the very talented Tom Lehrer:
    Hark the herald tribune sings,
    Advertising wondrous things.

    God rest ye merry, merchants,
    May you make the yuletide pay.

    Angels we have heard on high
    Tell us to go out and buy!

  114. 114.

    Barbara

    @ArchPundit: I cannot abide the culture of complaint that has grown up around Christmas. If you celebrate it you find time for the traditions and rites that are meaningful to you and you make them a priority.

  116. 116.

    Schlemazel

    @ThresherK:
    It would have been iffy had they used a black cast but as it was it was so much worse. Particularly when they cut backstage to show the black housekeeper sing “Who dat set the darkie free?”, apparently only to her kids as the audience can’t see it. SHameful

  117. 117.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Schlemazel: Was just about to link this. A perennial favourite.

    I used to work retail, so I have a reflexive loathing for nearly all Christmas music, but that Paul McCartney song is a borderline war crime. It’s amazing that such a talented songwriter has released so much awful crap (see also: “The Girl Is Mine”, “Ebony and Ivory”, and so on. A surprising number of these also involved other talented songwriters). The person who said Lennon and McCartney needed each other was 100% correct. Plastic Ono Band and Imagine are classics, and McCartney had his share of great pop songs in his solo career too, but on the whole, they needed another talented songwriter who wasn’t afraid to tell them, “No, that’s a crappy idea, [Paul/John].”

    Almost all the Christmas music I genuinely enjoy is largely or entirely instrumental, and mostly piano-centric (George Winston’s December, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc.). I did hear a Trans-Siberian Orchestra piece the other day that was kind of cool. I’d known of their existence for like twenty years but don’t think I’d ever heard one of their songs before.

    I will note that I don’t hate “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” quite so much now that I know that, in the contemporary parlance, that line about “something in my drink” isn’t actually meant to imply the drink was spiked.

  122. 122.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Mike in NC: “Mrs. Claus’s Kimono” by DBT definitely doesn’t suck. Sample:

    We’re loading up the toy sack
    With heroin and crack
    We’ll send Santa off to Georgia
    And he ain’t coming’ back
    We’ll call up Newt the Green Grinch
    And tell him Santa’s holdin’
    And they’ll have him on the chain gang
    Of the electric chair

  123. 123.

    NeenerNeener

    Oooo, I forgot Joni Mitchell’s “River”! I love that one too. Like I said, I have weird taste in Christmas music.

  124. 124.

    guachi

    “Do You Hear What I Hear” is terrible music. Too many versions are too slow and the song is just turgid and boring.

  126. 126.

    Booger

    First of all, Fairy Tale of New York IS the best Christmas song of all time; second of all, Pat DiNizio is dead?? 2017 sucks.

  129. 129.

    hueyplong

    The Ying Yang Twins had a Christmas song, the most memorable lines of which went something like:

    Yo Santa, I done been good all year
    Can I get some weed and a 12 pack of beer?

    The plot line involved Santa’s sleigh going down in Bankhead and Santa thereafter getting a beat down.

  133. 133.

    lgerard

    @ArchPundit:

    OK, you win, that’s the worst song i have heard in quite some time.

    I always like Aimee Mann;s Calling on Mary as well as this classic.

    My favorite Xmas music memory, which I am sure is common to many of my generation was getting that Chipmunks record. I played it about 300 times on Christmas day until my aunt ‘accidentally” sat on it after dinner. She promised to replace it, but I’m still waiting..

  136. 136.

    Mike J

    @Schlemazel:

    Imagine the top 40 songs from your HS graduation year. You probably liked a lot of them but if you had to list to them over and over again for 30 straight days every year you would hate each one.

    I worked at a top 40 radio station from the time I was 15 to about 27. This is why I hate it so much when people who weren’t even born yet go on about how great “Don’t Stop Believing” and similar garbage is.

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    Grandma got Run Over by the Reindeer. Worst song ever of any type. Was surprised that only one person above me mentioned it at all, Terrible ~ !!!

    I do like some of the classical works played this time of year. I don’t much like the relentless consumerism of Christmas.

    Bing Crosby is terrible at everything. His movies, singing, dancing, just yetch. I understand he may have been a decent guy, or not. I just don’t like his art, none of it. Do not understand his adoration by so many people.

    Harry Connick Jr is wonderful, I have never heard or seen anything he has done that wasn’t good. Took my dad to see him a very few years before dad died. He loved big band music and this was classic big band jazz on a big stage in a big house. Wonderful, and dad loved it. Right up his alley!

    But I don’t want to hear xmas music by him. or anyone. Was in high school chorus, burned me out on xmas songs! Good way to meet girls, tho.

  138. 138.

    BC in Illinois

    One video I have enjoyed every year is The Barenaked Ladies with the Boston Pops singing three songs:

    0:00 – – Jingle Bells (apparently a well-known erotic winter fantasy)
    03:15 – – I Saw Three Ships, in which they avoid the verse of profound geographical ignorance (“They all sailed into Bethlehem”)
    05:20 – – My favorite: the mash-up of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and We Three Kings

    The reason to see it on video comes at 07:30, when the lead singer says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like very much to welcome to the stage, Miss Sarah McLachlin!” (who did the original album with BNL). The crowd goes wild, until he gos on, “Seriously, nothing would make me happier.” “Wouldn’t that be awesome?” “Would’ve been great.” “She couldn’t make it, she’s in Vancouver . . .” “Would’ve been great, though.”

    BNL 2006 – Boston Pops Orchestra, Part One

  139. 139.

    Raoul

    @Doug! at top:
    I’ll go with Man With The Bag, done by Kay Starr.

    Been listening to that for years, since the first Ultra Lounge Christmas CD. But: We always call it the “Santa is in the bag” song. Since it’s Ultra Lounge, you gotta have cocktails, right? (Though I’ve been sober 15 years, so just funnin’).

  140. 140.

    terben

    Here in Oz, it’s already the 21st. That means it’s Gravy Day, so called because of Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy. Kelly says he was inspired by the first verse of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. Longing for the Christmas that you can’t have.

    The sun is shining, the grass is green,
    The orange and palm trees sway.
    There’s never been such a day
    in Beverly Hills, L.A.
    But it’s December the twenty-fourth,—
    And I am longing to be up North—

  141. 141.

    Schlemazel

    @Mike J:
    I never worked at a top 40 station but my first job was at a backwoods AM strictly formatted by the owner. We had about 150 albums divided into 12 categories (male vocal, female vocal, religious, instrumental, old tyme, C&W etc). I had to take the end album from each category and play one track from each (some tracks were scratched out but I never figured out how he decided). the album then went to the back of that category. I worked 50 hours a week for a year there. At least with top 40 there would have been some change from month to month.

    EDIT: Because I was being screwed over by the owner and sick to the teeth I played the same song from each album every time it came up for the last 5-6 weeks I worked there.

  142. 142.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Mike J: “South Detroit”, for the record, is actually the town of Windsor, Ontario. The vast majority of people will get that wrong. (Most people wouldn’t think that going south at any point in the U.S. would lead you into Canada, I suppose.) I guess Journey wrote it that way because they thought it sounded better, but to people who actually know the geography of the region it sounds silly.

    I’d thought that song was overrated even before Glee made it ubiquitous. I like some Journey songs, but that ain’t one of ’em. (Then again, the passage of time has softened me on some others I used to hate; I appreciate Santana’s “Smooth” now that it’s not on the radio every fifteen minutes, for example.)

    … on the other hand, I think I’ve only heard “Despacito” once and couldn’t tell you how it goes. Couldn’t tell you how I escaped that one but not “Don’t Stop Believin'”.

  143. 143.

    Ridnik Chrome

    I would be quite happy if I did not have to listen to ANY version of “Sleigh Bells”, “Walking In A Winter Wonderland”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the next five or ten years.

    As for Christmas music I had not heard before, even though it’s really an Advent song, and an old one, too, I was not familiar with “O Come O Come Emanuel” until this year. I sang it with the choir I’m in, and really had fun doing it.

    Another Christmas favorite: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s version of “We Three Kings” (aka “We Free Kings”).

  144. 144.

    Raoul

    I’ll also say that the singer and album that always means the most to me, because my Dad always played the LP while putting on the Christmas lights on our tree, was Muriel Smith’s Glory Of Christmas.
    It’s (mostly) available on iTunes – the track sequence is different and missing one old fave, so I have to dig out a cassette version to hear one treasured song, but it makes me misty for my childhood.
    Here it is on youTube (the intro few bars of track1 are rather over dramatic, but stick with it, it’s quite sweet after that. The French carol just makes me soar/weep)
    Smith was better known for her creating the role of Carmen Jones on Broadway (based loosely on Bizet’s Carmen), btw. Died in ’85.

  145. 145.

    Just One More Canuck

    The Kinks’ Father Christmas seems appropriate this year
    “Give all the toys to the little rich boys”

  146. 146.

    ThresherK

    @Schlemazel: I don’t remember that part, or much of the lyric (actually used “darkie”?).

    I can recall the tune, the herky-jerky rhythm which Berlin used in it (a la “Top Hat”), nicely melded to Astaire’s dancing.

  148. 148.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @MCA1:

    So, whining over, Harold Arlen wrote Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and it’s poignant and has some nice melancholy chords.

    More than just a few melancholy chords. If you really want a cure for Christmas cheer, watch Judy Garland perform it in Meet me in St. Louis. I assume the song was written for that film. I know very little about the plot of the movie and have no idea what that scene is all about, but it still makes me want to rip my heart out when I watch it.

    Somebody upthread dissed Carol of the Bells, which I kind of like. But anyway, perhaps you’d like the Carol of the Bartenders version.

    If you like Dan Fogelburg (sadly, passed away very suddenly of pancreatic cancer some years back), he had an awesome Christmas album with cool versions of some traditional songs and a few new songs he wrote. I think most of the album is here.

  149. 149.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @terben:

    Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy.

    Probably the best singer songwriter in the world for the past 30 years and pretty much ignored outside of Oz.

  151. 151.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Ridnik Chrome: And two nominees for truly terrible Christmas songs (as distinct from songs that are annoying because they’ve been played to death): “I’m Gettin’ Nothin’ For Christmas” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. Nausea inducing, no matter who sings them.

  153. 153.

    Schlemazel

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:
    I saw Judy Garland perform “Over the Rainbow” sometime in the late 50s, early 60s. I didn’t know her story at the time but it struck me that it was the saddest song I had every heard. The general take most people have is of a happy, hopeful song but the way she sang it it was all regret, longing and sorrow.

  154. 154.

    Raoul

    @Jane2: I have the original Pogues song on my Christmas mix for my annual b-day party/holiday party. My partner always wonders what that is, but I love it.
    Just listening to your tip. You’re right. It’s pasteurized dreck. No, indeed.

    Sidenote: The death of Kirsty MacColl was so strange and tragic. No cover would ever overcome it, IMO. And, while not Xmas music at all, I love Walking Down Madison.

  157. 157.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Schlemazel: She did it first in Wizard of Oz of course as a teenager, and it was sort of happy/hopeful there. But as you say over the years she turned it into something quite different.

    Was the performance you saw something like this?

  158. 158.

    rekoob

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:
    The context in “Meet Me in St. Louis” is that Judy Garland’s character is singing wistfully about leaving St. Louis in the new year, as her father announced shortly before. Vincent Minnelli, the director, first met Garland during the filming, and they later married, of course.

  159. 159.

    jackmac

    “Little Drummer Boy” is the absolute worst.

    “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” — especially the Andy Williams version — runs a close second. What the hell does the lyric about “scary ghost stories” have to do with Christmas?

    In fairness, I’m very fond of Leroy Anderson’s “A Christmas Festival” and “Sleigh Ride”. They never get old.

  160. 160.

    JR

    Pentatonix’s rendition of the “Carol of the Bells” was pretty awful.

    Amazon played that one for me.

  162. 162.

    Archpundit

    @Barbara: People will stand in fucking line to see a piece of toast with Jesus’s image so the whole premise is dumb. The execution just takes it to a new level of shit on a bun

  163. 163.

    Randy

    Worst: My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music (why is this even considered to be a Christmas song?)

    Runner-up: Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas

    Best: Beach Boys’ A Capella version of We Three Kings

    I also like Step Into Christmas by EJ, provided that it’s not overplayed on the radio. I *have yet* to hear it this holiday season. The b-side isn’t bad, either: Ho! Ho! Ho! (Who’d Be A Turkey At Christmas). And the song by The Waitresses, plus Pretenders, and the Kinks.

    I found this forum by doing a search on “You know what I want, you know what I n-n-n-need”. Seriously. Thank you for the Spinal Tap… errr, I mean, the Thamesmen reference. :-)

  165. 165.

    Raoul

    @Yarrow: [via Twitter]
    BAND AID: there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time!
    AFRICA: actually we-
    BAND AID: where nothing ever grows!
    AFRICA: that’s not the issue, colonisation-
    BAND AID: no rain or rivers flow!
    AFRICA: if you’d just listen
    BONO: tonight thank god it’s them
    AFRICA: what the fu

  166. 166.

    Betsy

    It’s too late and the thread is way stale, so that’s my cue to come in with my insightful comment.

    The most beautiful Christmas song ever written or performed, even up to and including Silent Night, is the German Carol “Lightly Falls the Snow”. Listen and get chills. https://youtu.be/ALqGgYH2S7g

  167. 167.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @ArchPundit: Interesting that the comments have been disabled for that dreck.

    It’s crap like this that makes me scream “feed them to the lions!”

  168. 168.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @J R in WV: I must disagree. I love Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer…simply because it is so meme upsetting. Just takes on full steam ahead at all the modern commercial Christmas tropes.

    That version of Step Into Christmas is wonderful…great cover of the already wonderful original by Elton John.

  169. 169.

    LurkerNoLonger

    I’ve seen it mentioned twice here but it deserves more love, Three Ships, hands down my favorite Christmas song and one they hardly ever play on the radio.

  170. 170.

    NotMax

    @rekoob

    Also too, the lyrics were (at Garland’s insistence) rewritten before filming to be less funereal.

    Originally included such morbid sentiments as

    Have yourself a merry little Christmas
    It may be our last

  171. 171.

    maeve

    Annoying:

    Any version of Little Drummer Boy (except the Pogues)
    Any version of Frosty the Snowman (except the Pogues
    Any version of Winter Wonderland (exept the Pogues)
    – when I was a teenager we modified the lyrics:
    In the meadow we can build a snowman
    Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
    He’ll say, “Are you married?”
    We’ll say, “No man”
    And you can keep your petite bourgeoisie ideas to yourself”

    Anything at all by Manheim Steamroller (my sister in law gave me a CD once )

  173. 173.

    BC in Illinois

    12 Days of Christmas – – by the Canadian Brass

    Different musical piece for each day.
    (It helps if you realize that “Purcell’s Trumpet Tune” may have been written by Jeremiah Clarke.)

  176. 176.

    Sab

    @Betsy: That’s is lovely, but my Irish American grandmother who grew up in a German speaking town in Wisconsin died forty years ago, so I have no one to translate.

  177. 177.

    carlo granada

    @lgerard: If Chipmunk’s christmas songs have a positive memory, Dan Deacon might be appealing. “Baltihorse” is very christmasy. Worth at least one listen all the way through. I was especially drawn to Aimee Mann’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — combines the melancholy and hope with banjo, a mellotron-like something, horns, bells…

    Other favorites:
    Ridin Home on Christmas Eve — Michael Martin Murphy
    Under the Mistletoe — Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks
    The People’s Republic of Christmas — the Hot Butter Elves

  178. 178.

    Betsy

    @Sab:
    Silently the snow sifts down
    and the lake rests in silence.
    Christmas is shining.
    Rejoice, Christkind is coming soon

    In the heart it’s warm,
    Still, silent sorrow and harm.
    Cares of life, fade!
    Rejoice, Christkind is coming soon

    Soon the holy night
    A chorus of angels awakens;
    Listen only to how lovely it sounds.
    Rejoice, the Christ Child comes soon.

    Leise rieselt der Schnee
    Still und starr ruht der See
    Weihnachtlich glänzet der Wald
    Freue dich, Christkind kommt bald

    In den Herzen ist’s warm
    Still schweigt Kummer und Harm
    Sorge des Lebens verhallt
    Freue dich, Christkind kommt bald

    Bald ist die heilige Nacht
    Chor der Engel erwacht
    Hört nur wie lieblich es schallt
    Freue dich, Christkind kommt bald

    (Eduard Ebel / Bearb.: A. Goraguer)

  179. 179.

    Jacel

    @Gemina13: I recall hearing that tune played by an ice cream truck in Brooklyn. I was surprised that dour a minor key tune plus an ornamented variation would be played by the bells on a truck trying to spread happiness.

  180. 180.

    kindness

    When my family gets up Christmas morning just before we start throwing presents at one another we traditionally put on John Lennon’s ‘War Is Over, Happy Christmas’. It sets the mood really nicely.

  181. 181.

    Katyfitz

    Longtime lurker. Had to jump in to say Fairytale of New York by the Pogues IS the best Christmas song.

    For traditional songs, I like O Come Emmanuel and O Holy Night. Even though an I’m an atheist now they still bring a tear to my eye.

    Merry Christmas! I think y’all are great

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