'Twas the night before Christmas
and through the Tri-State Area
it's our duty to each other
to care and to take care o' ya.
In the cabinet are bagels.
In the fridge is the jam
and also the pork roll.
It's not "Taylor ham."
The children are nestled
in their beds made of wood
hoping that St. Nicholas
will buy that they were good.
And with the stereo playing
and the tube showing "Yule Log"
I return to this annual
feature of my blog:
Problematic Christmas Songs.
Let's start with the biggest Christmas song of all: "Jingle Bells." It was written in 1850 by James Lord Pierpont at Simpson Tavern in Medford, Massachusetts, outside Boston. It was published under the title "The One Horse Open Sleigh" in September 1857.
Guess what: This song has nothing to do with Christmas! The lyrics make no mention of Christmas. Or Jesus, by any name: Christ, Lord, King, King of Kings, King of Israel, King of the Jews, King of the World, King of Heaven, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, Holy Child, Teacher, Rabbi, Wonderful Counselor... none of them.
Nor do the lyrics make any mention of presents, or a gathering family, or even Santa Claus and his entourage (Mrs. Claus, reindeer, elves, whoever else he's got up at the North Pole). "Jingle Bells" is about Winter. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas. It could be sung at any time from December 1 through March 31 -- or, if you prefer, from Thanksgiving through Easter. (Or, in Minnesota, even longer than that.)
The title was adapted for the 1st rock and roll song to be about Christmas, "Jingle Bell Rock," written in 1957 by Joe Beal and Jim Boothe, and a hit for Bobby Helms. The B-side of the record was
- "Captain Santa Claus (and His Reindeer Space Patrol)"
Apparently, the Batman variation goes back at least as far as the 1966 TV series, and has been cited in later Batman media: "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg, the Batmobile just lost its wheel, and the Commissioner broke his leg!" (Alternatively, "and the Joker got away!" even though, unlike "the Commissioner broke his leg," it doesn't rhyme.)
Then there are the songs that someone (I forget who) once described as "songs Dean Martin liked to sing to get a woman to snuggle up with him by the fireplace." "Winter Wonderland," by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith, 1934; "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, 1945; "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," by Irving Berlin, 1937; and "A Marshmallow World" by Carl Sigman and Peter DeRose, 1949.
Now, I'm not gonna rip Dino, or say that these aren't nice songs. But they don't have anything to do with Christmas, either. They're about Winter, not about Christmas. And since we associate Christmas with Winter, regardless of Scripture suggesting that it didn't happen during Winter (not to mention that there's no snow mentioned in any of the Gospels), we associate these songs with Christmas, however erroneously.
One of the Dean Martin fireplace songs (which also doesn't have anything to do with Christmas) that most certainly is not nice, and goes far beyond even naughty, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside," written in 1944 by Frank Loesser. In recent years, due to the #MeToo movement, this one has come under intense scrutiny.
The woman in the song says she has to go, that her mother will worry, that she's got a reputation to protect. And the man she's with keeps telling her that it's cold outside, that there's no cabs to be had, that she should stay. "Well, maybe just half a drink more," she finally relents. (Dean Martin with booze on hand? How out of character... ) And then, just 2 lines later, she asks, "Say, what's in this drink?"
So on the 12th day of Christmas, your true love gave to you... 12 roofies roofing? That's why this is known as "The Date Rape Christmas Song," and it is inappropriate on so many levels. At the very least, it's about a guy working way too hard to seduce a girl, and using Old Man Winter (if not the Christmas season itself) as an excuse.
"Sleigh Ride," written in 1948 by Leroy Anderson, is another song like that, although considerably more innocent. The most familiar version is by Johnny Mathis. Johnny is openly gay, and this had been rumored for some time before he came out, but I never believed it until a few too many listens to him sing, "Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, too... "
Come to think of it, the song also mentions "a Winter fairyland." Johnny's a great singer, even at age 89, making him perhaps the last survivor of the canon of "Classic Christmas Songs." But this song does him no favors.
"Frosty the Snowman" also has nothing to do with Christmas. It was written in 1950 by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson, and the lyrics make no mention of the holiday. It wasn't until the 1969 CBS TV special, narrated by an animated Jimmy Durante (as if the great comedian wasn't already quite animated, ah-cha-cha-cha!), that Frosty (voiced by another great comedian, Jackie Vernon) got an official link with Christmas.
And, as a fellow Yankee-themed blogger pointed out, the song begins, "Frosty the Snowman was a happy jolly soul." "Was"? Not "is"? What happened? Is he dead now? As in melted? Or is he just unhappy? Maybe he's only mad that he didn't get any royalties from the song.
Also weird about Frosty: If he's so afraid of heat, why does he have a pipe? And "two eyes made out of coal"? And, as was once pointed out to me, no matter how fat a snowman (and he did kind of resemble the portly Vernon), his walking wouldn't sound like "Thump-ety-thump-thump." He's made of snow, walking on snow. It would sound more like "Swish, swish, swish."
"Winter Wonderland," "Marshmallow World," "Sleigh Ride" and "Frosty the Snowman" appear on the 1963 classic A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records – better known as The Phil Spector Christmas Album. Talk about problematic: Like many people who achieved greatly, Spector also did some awful things -- in his case, horrific things, and his great art (he called it "The Wall of Sound") cannot overcome that.
Another song on that album is "The Bells of St. Mary's," written in 1917 by A. Emmett Adams and Douglas Furber, following Furber's visit to St. Mary's Church in Southampton, England. This song is also not about Christmas: The lyrics mention "red leaves," suggesting that it takes place in Autumn).
Now, I'm not gonna rip Dino, or say that these aren't nice songs. But they don't have anything to do with Christmas, either. They're about Winter, not about Christmas. And since we associate Christmas with Winter, regardless of Scripture suggesting that it didn't happen during Winter (not to mention that there's no snow mentioned in any of the Gospels), we associate these songs with Christmas, however erroneously.
One of the Dean Martin fireplace songs (which also doesn't have anything to do with Christmas) that most certainly is not nice, and goes far beyond even naughty, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside," written in 1944 by Frank Loesser. In recent years, due to the #MeToo movement, this one has come under intense scrutiny.
The woman in the song says she has to go, that her mother will worry, that she's got a reputation to protect. And the man she's with keeps telling her that it's cold outside, that there's no cabs to be had, that she should stay. "Well, maybe just half a drink more," she finally relents. (Dean Martin with booze on hand? How out of character... ) And then, just 2 lines later, she asks, "Say, what's in this drink?"
So on the 12th day of Christmas, your true love gave to you... 12 roofies roofing? That's why this is known as "The Date Rape Christmas Song," and it is inappropriate on so many levels. At the very least, it's about a guy working way too hard to seduce a girl, and using Old Man Winter (if not the Christmas season itself) as an excuse.
"Sleigh Ride," written in 1948 by Leroy Anderson, is another song like that, although considerably more innocent. The most familiar version is by Johnny Mathis. Johnny is openly gay, and this had been rumored for some time before he came out, but I never believed it until a few too many listens to him sing, "Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, too... "
Come to think of it, the song also mentions "a Winter fairyland." Johnny's a great singer, even at age 89, making him perhaps the last survivor of the canon of "Classic Christmas Songs." But this song does him no favors.
"Frosty the Snowman" also has nothing to do with Christmas. It was written in 1950 by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson, and the lyrics make no mention of the holiday. It wasn't until the 1969 CBS TV special, narrated by an animated Jimmy Durante (as if the great comedian wasn't already quite animated, ah-cha-cha-cha!), that Frosty (voiced by another great comedian, Jackie Vernon) got an official link with Christmas.
And, as a fellow Yankee-themed blogger pointed out, the song begins, "Frosty the Snowman was a happy jolly soul." "Was"? Not "is"? What happened? Is he dead now? As in melted? Or is he just unhappy? Maybe he's only mad that he didn't get any royalties from the song.
Also weird about Frosty: If he's so afraid of heat, why does he have a pipe? And "two eyes made out of coal"? And, as was once pointed out to me, no matter how fat a snowman (and he did kind of resemble the portly Vernon), his walking wouldn't sound like "Thump-ety-thump-thump." He's made of snow, walking on snow. It would sound more like "Swish, swish, swish."
"Winter Wonderland," "Marshmallow World," "Sleigh Ride" and "Frosty the Snowman" appear on the 1963 classic A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records – better known as The Phil Spector Christmas Album. Talk about problematic: Like many people who achieved greatly, Spector also did some awful things -- in his case, horrific things, and his great art (he called it "The Wall of Sound") cannot overcome that.
Another song on that album is "The Bells of St. Mary's," written in 1917 by A. Emmett Adams and Douglas Furber, following Furber's visit to St. Mary's Church in Southampton, England. This song is also not about Christmas: The lyrics mention "red leaves," suggesting that it takes place in Autumn).
The song says the bells, "they are calling the young loves, the true loves who come from the sea." This makes no sense if you only know the song from the Spector album. But knowing it was written in Southampton, Britain's biggest seaport, during World War I, provides the explanation: The bells are welcoming sailors coming home.
It was linked to Christmas by being selected as the title song from a 1945 Christmas-themed movie starring Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O’Malley (he'd won an Oscar in the role in the previous year's Going My Way), and Ingrid Bergman as Sister Mary Benedict, the most beautiful nun you'll ever see. (Eat your heart out, Julie Andrews. And the real Maria von Trapp was no looker.)
The album had 13 songs, 5 of which are not Christmas-related. The highlights, in my opinion, are Veronica Bennett -- Phil's girlfriend and eventual ex-wife, who became known as Ronnie Spector -- singing "Frawsty the Snowman" in her N'Yawk accent; and Darlene Love belting out the album's one original song, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."
Phil demanded an original song for the album, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote it, as they wrote (and would continue to write) so many songs he produced. Sonny Bono played percussion on the album, and if you listen closely, you can hear his eventual wife (and eventual ex-wife), Cher, singing backup on "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."
The rest of these, I’ll do in alphabetical order:
All I Want for Christmas Is You. The newest Christmas classic -- and even this one is now 30 years old (1994) -- it seems harmless enough, even though those who hate it do so as intensely as those who love it. Indeed, it even seems to have the girl telling her guy to fight the commercialism of Christmas, that she doesn't need the kind of things that Eartha Kitt (and later Madonna) demanded in "Santa Baby."
But it also suggests that what she really needs is a man. So feminists tend to not like this one. To be fair, though, she doesn't say she needs him, only that she wants him -- which opens an entirely different can of worms. The song is rarely sung by a man to a woman, but when it is, it sounds a little stalkerish.
Phil demanded an original song for the album, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote it, as they wrote (and would continue to write) so many songs he produced. Sonny Bono played percussion on the album, and if you listen closely, you can hear his eventual wife (and eventual ex-wife), Cher, singing backup on "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."
The rest of these, I’ll do in alphabetical order:
All I Want for Christmas Is You. The newest Christmas classic -- and even this one is now 30 years old (1994) -- it seems harmless enough, even though those who hate it do so as intensely as those who love it. Indeed, it even seems to have the girl telling her guy to fight the commercialism of Christmas, that she doesn't need the kind of things that Eartha Kitt (and later Madonna) demanded in "Santa Baby."
But it also suggests that what she really needs is a man. So feminists tend to not like this one. To be fair, though, she doesn't say she needs him, only that she wants him -- which opens an entirely different can of worms. The song is rarely sung by a man to a woman, but when it is, it sounds a little stalkerish.
Mariah has had more Number 1 singles on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart than any solo performer, 19. (That's 1 more than Elvis Presley. Only The Beatles, with 21, have had more.) "All I Want for Christmas Is You" was not one of them on its original release. It was ineligible for inclusion, because it was not released commercially as a single in any physical format.
A new joke surrounding the song is that one sign of the Christmas season coming earlier and earlier every year is that "Every year, Mariah Carey gets thawed out sooner." The idea being that, now past her hitmaking days, she only appears at Christmas to sing this song.
But that's because streaming services have led to the song being "bought" more as Christmas approaches. In its December 21, 2019 issue, Billboard listed "All I Want for Christmas Is You" as Number 1 on its Hot 100, setting a new record for longest time from original release to chart-top: 25 years. It's gotten there again every year since.
But because of the streaming issue, Billboard's Hot 100 for its December 21, 2024 issue also has Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" at Number 2, Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock" at Number 3, Wham!'s "Last Christmas" at Number 4, and Burl Ives' "A Holly Jolly Christmas" at Number 5. The highest-ranking non-Christmas song is at Number 6: "Die With a Smile," a duet by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.
In addition to the streaming services, I blame the return of "All I Want for Christmas Is You" on Love Actually, the 2003 British "cast of thousands" film, which people tend to either adore or despise. (I've watched it once, and once is enough.) It had the song sung by Olivia Olson, then 11 years old, in a school Christmas pageant.
Auld Lang Syne. Robert Burns, Scotland's unofficial poet laureate, wrote this song in Scots Gaelic in 1788. Somehow, it got associated with Hogmanay, the Scottish version of New Year's Eve celebrations.
Starting in 1929, Guy Lombardo and his big band, the Royal Canadians, played it just after midnight, first over radio and then on television, on CBS from a major hotel in Midtown Manhattan: The Roosevelt Hotel until 1958, and then from 1959 until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria. Lombardo died in 1977, but network broadcasts kept doing it, including The Tonight Show on NBC and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC (even now, after Clark's own death).
But the song has nothing to do with Christmas. So why do we associate it with December 25 along with December 31/January 1? My guess is because it was used at the end of the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. So, blame Frank Capra.
The Christmas Shoes. The idea of this comparatively recent song, recorded in 2000 by Christian group NewSong, is, on the surface, heartwarming: One of those, "And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown" moments:
A guy on line at the cash register, having driven himself nuts shopping for Christmas presents, hears a kid tell the cashier he has to get these shoes for his dying mother, so that she can be presentable when she appears before Jesus, and he doesn't have the money for them, so the guy pays for the shoes for the kid. Certainly, a beautiful gesture.
On the other hand, it might be the biggest downer in the history of Christmas songs. This song isn't about life, it's about death. If it was "a real Christmas song," the mom should be so thrilled by such a beautiful gesture, from both son and stranger, that she gets better, and enjoys many more Christmases to come.
Starting in 1929, Guy Lombardo and his big band, the Royal Canadians, played it just after midnight, first over radio and then on television, on CBS from a major hotel in Midtown Manhattan: The Roosevelt Hotel until 1958, and then from 1959 until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria. Lombardo died in 1977, but network broadcasts kept doing it, including The Tonight Show on NBC and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC (even now, after Clark's own death).
But the song has nothing to do with Christmas. So why do we associate it with December 25 along with December 31/January 1? My guess is because it was used at the end of the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. So, blame Frank Capra.
The Christmas Shoes. The idea of this comparatively recent song, recorded in 2000 by Christian group NewSong, is, on the surface, heartwarming: One of those, "And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown" moments:
A guy on line at the cash register, having driven himself nuts shopping for Christmas presents, hears a kid tell the cashier he has to get these shoes for his dying mother, so that she can be presentable when she appears before Jesus, and he doesn't have the money for them, so the guy pays for the shoes for the kid. Certainly, a beautiful gesture.
On the other hand, it might be the biggest downer in the history of Christmas songs. This song isn't about life, it's about death. If it was "a real Christmas song," the mom should be so thrilled by such a beautiful gesture, from both son and stranger, that she gets better, and enjoys many more Christmases to come.
And, if it was a Hallmark Christmas movie, the guy wouldn't have shaved for four days, and he'd meet the mom, whose husband, the kid's father, ran off long ago; and, once the mom recovered, they'd get married.
Real life tends to not work that way, but "Christmas miracles" do. Why not sing about that? After all, NewSong, are you Christian in just name, or also in deed?
The Christmas Song – better known by its opening line: "Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire." Mel Tormé wrote it, and Nat King Cole is its best-known performer. "And so, I'm offering this simple phrase, to kids from 1 to 92... " So, for everyone age 93 and up, you're out of luck? Sorry, Dick Van Dyke. Tough cookies, Old Man Periwinkle.
Deck the Halls. The melody is Welsh, dating back to the 16th Century, while the English lyrics, written by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, date to 1862. A safe one, already in the pubilc domain, with no mention of religion, good to open Christmas movies from A Christmas Story to the Hallmark cliché-fests.
The Christmas Song – better known by its opening line: "Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire." Mel Tormé wrote it, and Nat King Cole is its best-known performer. "And so, I'm offering this simple phrase, to kids from 1 to 92... " So, for everyone age 93 and up, you're out of luck? Sorry, Dick Van Dyke. Tough cookies, Old Man Periwinkle.
Deck the Halls. The melody is Welsh, dating back to the 16th Century, while the English lyrics, written by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, date to 1862. A safe one, already in the pubilc domain, with no mention of religion, good to open Christmas movies from A Christmas Story to the Hallmark cliché-fests.
But there's the line, "Don we now our gay apparel." Once, this meant, "Let's all put on some bright clothing to commemorate this festive season." Now, it means, "Sweetheart, even Nicki Minaj wouldn't be caught dead wearing that!"
I've gone on social media and asked a few people with rainbow flag icons in their bio if it's okay to still use the line. So far, all have said it is.
And I'm guessing "Troll the ancient Yuletide carol" means "Please sing an old Christmas song." It could be worse, I suppose: You could be calling a woman "Carol the ancient Yuletide troll!"
Fairytale of New York. Shane MacGowan of The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl sang this duet in 1987, and it is not a song whose lyrics are fit for this post. The short, clean version is that, for the couple in the song, the fairy tale did not come true.
And I'm guessing "Troll the ancient Yuletide carol" means "Please sing an old Christmas song." It could be worse, I suppose: You could be calling a woman "Carol the ancient Yuletide troll!"
Fairytale of New York. Shane MacGowan of The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl sang this duet in 1987, and it is not a song whose lyrics are fit for this post. The short, clean version is that, for the couple in the song, the fairy tale did not come true.
Kirsty was killed in a maritime accident in 2000; while Shane, born on Christmas Day 1957, finally had his excesses catch up with him in 2023.
Feliz Navidad. The only problem I have with this one is that it's incredibly repetitive. It was good of José Feliciano to write a Christmas song that kids whose first language was Spanish can sing, but couldn't he have written a second verse?
Holly Jolly Christmas. The song was written by Johnny Marks, and introduced by Burl Ives in the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which was based on another song that Marks wrote). It certainly seems jolly and innocuous enough -- until you get to the line, "Somebody waits for you. Kiss her once for me."
Bump that! If she's waiting for me, I'm kissing her for nobody but myself! It reminds me of George Carlin's rant about the line, "Give her my best." (Said rant is too risqué to discuss in a Christmas-themed post.)
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. British songwriter Tommie Connor wrote it in 1952, and it was sung by Jimmy Boyd, then 13 years old, and later to marry Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig. He should not be confused with the Jim Boyd who played J. Arthur Crank, Paul the Gorilla, and other characters on the 1971-77 PBS kids show The Electric Company.
Please, save the "Santa only comes once a year" joke. That, too, is too risqué.
To make matters worse, there's a version of this song sung by... the Jackson 5, back when they were first big. So, that explains Michael Jackson... I wonder if he ever asked a child to sit on his lap.
I'll Be Home For Christmas. Another one from Der Bingle, written in 1943 by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent, and it sounds like a soldier in World War II singing to his girl "on the home front."
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. Written in 1951 by Meredith Willson, who went on to write the musical The Music Man.
True, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has ghosts in it, but how old were you when you stopped being scared of those ghosts? Even when I saw my 1st version of it -- the 1962 Mr. Magoo version, when I was about 6 or so, in the 1970s -- I wasn't scared of them.
Last Christmas. One of the more recent ones, from 1984. First of all, it's by Wham! Second of all... Do I even need a "second of all"? The lyrics certainly suggest that it's the first gay Christmas song: "A face on a lover with a fire in his heart, a man under cover but you tore me apart."
There are "blue Christmas" songs -- "blue" as in sad, not "blue" as in "blue language" -- but this one, even if the "man under cover" is the narrator, not his target, is lame as heck. And did I mention it's by Wham?
Little Saint Nick. The Beach Boys' 1963 contribution to Christmas songs is a guilty pleasure of mine: I'm not a "car guy," but I love how they make Santa's sleigh sound like a hot rod. But they have a little problem with counting: "Haulin' through the snow at a frightenin' speed, with a half a dozen deer, with Rudy to lead." Half a dozen is 6. There's supposed to be 8 -- 9, counting Rudolph. In this song, Big Red is 2 reindeer short. Well, there is that hoary old joke about Comet staying home to clean the sink...
Someone who was once a friend and a fellow Yankee-themed blogger (but is no longer either, both by their choice) liked to once point out that, in the 1964 TV special based on the song, the story gets worse before it gets better: Even Santa himself gets on Rudolph's case – and on that of Donner, who in the story is the lead reindeer on the sleigh and Rudolph's father, for essentially passing on a genetic mutation (of which Donner himself appears to be only a carrier).
This is not one of Santa's better pop-culture representations. But, remember, this story isn't about Santa, it's about Rudolph. And Sam the Snowman (voice of Burl Ives) is giving you his perception of what happened. Sam might be an unreliable narrator.
Also, if you ever hear Dean Martin's version, you might note that both the singer and the subject are known for having a red nose, albeit with very different causes.
Run, Rudolph, Run. (That's the title, while the lyrics say, "Run, run, Rudolph.") The same year that Marks wrote "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," he cranked out "Run, Rudolph, Run," and gave it to Chuck Berry.
Silver Bells. Jay Livingston and Ray Evans wrote it for the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid, where it was sung by bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. They had originally called it "Tinkle Bells," until Jay's wife said, "Are you out of your mind? Do you know what the word 'tinkle' is?"
Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime. Former Beatle Paul McCartney wrote this in 1979. How is it that his former musical partner, John Lennon, who dared to "Imagine there's no heaven... and no religion, too" – not that he was saying there was no God or Heaven, just asking us to imagine a world where people had "nothing to kill or die for" – wrote such a fantastic Christmas song, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," in 1971? While Paul, one of the world's greatest songwriters and one of its greatest sentimentalists, facing that most sentimental of holidays, wrote such a weak one?
(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays. Every place in this country has people trying to get back there for Christmas, because it's "home" to them. I have no issue with that. This song, written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman, and first done in 1954 by Perry Como, first mentions that the man trying to get home to Pennsylvania (Como's home State), is starting out (or, perhaps, stopping along the way) in Tennessee. No problem there, either.
But then he mentions people going "to Dixie's sunny shore." Even if you're not bothered by this glorification of the South (and I am), it doesn't fit with the whole "Christmas as Winter Wonderland" idea.
Also, when he sings, "From Atlantic to Pacific, gee, the traffic is terrific," whether he realizes it or not, he's using "terrific" in the original sense: Inspiring terror. If you've ever done Christmas shopping in Bergen County, New Jersey, where stores aren't permitted to open on Sundays, on the last Saturday before Christmas, you will understand. Christmas-shopping traffic and Christmas-travel traffic are not "terrific" as in "wonderful" or "jolly."
The Twelve Days of Christmas. The earliest known version of this one was published in 1780. As someone pointed out to me, this is the "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" of Christmas songs.
First of all, where did your true love get all that stuff? Second of all, where are you going to put it all? I mentioned George Carlin before, but I wonder if he ever incorporated this song into his bit "A Place For My Stuff."
A partridge, 2 doves, 3 hens, 4 calling birds, 6 geese, 7 swans? That's a lot of birds. Think of the mess! Five golden rings? I can see getting one, but 5? One for each finger on the hand? That doesn't make any sense, unless the singer is Elvis, Liberace, or Elton John. Or maybe Pink, or Pauley Perrette in character as Dr. Abby Sciuto of NCIS.
Six geese a-laying? Who uses goose eggs? Maybe one of the geese is "the goose that lays the golden egg." Eight maids a-milking? Maybe she already has 8 cows, but this is not specified in the song. Without cows, the milkmaids will have nothing to do.
Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming? I hope they're all rented, because I can't imagine having them around every day, especially if none of them does anything else. Maybe one of the dancing ladies is also one of the milkmaids, and one of the leaping lords is also a piper or a drummer.
Also, what's so special about a partridge, in that it's the centerpiece of the song? I looked it up: In Greek mythology, in a fit of jealous rage, Daedalus threw his nephew Perdix off a hill, and the gods turned him into the bird in question. Hence, a partridge makes his nest in a tree that's not too high off the ground, like a pear tree. In French, the bird is a "perdrix," pronounced "pair-DREE," which may have confused an Englishman.
But that still doesn't explain what any of these varieties of bird has to do with Christmas. The only explanation I can think of for any of them is that a goose is the traditional bird to serve as Christmas dinner in England. After all, you don't need all 6 geese still alive to lay the eggs.
Huh? Either the songwriter, Benjamin Hanby in 1864, just threw together a few words that rhyme, without thinking about how they would sound; or Santa has his priorities way out of whack; or little Will is into, uh, things that are too risqué to mention on Christmas. Maybe he's not so little.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The 2nd verse begins, "Now, bring us some figgy pudding." Have you ever eaten figgy pudding? Have you ever even seen figgy pudding? Until November 23, 2016, neither had I.
But, that day, on the way down to our Thanksgiving weekend getaway in Ocean City, Maryland, we stopped off in the Philadelphia suburb of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Across the street from the British Chip Shop, producer of fabulous pub food, there is a store owned by the same people, the English Gardener Gift Shop, which sells British- (English, Scottish and Welsh) and Irish-themed items, including products normally available only over there, like Walker's crisps (what we, not they, would call "chips"), Branston pickle (a chutney), and Irn Bru (a Scottish variation on orange soda).
Among the British delicacies they sell is, yes, figgy pudding -- which, like Yorkshire pudding, black pudding, white pudding, plum pudding and even blood pudding, is basically what the British call a fruitcake. None of them resemble what we might call chocolate, rice or tapioca pudding.
The 4th and final verse says, "We won't go until we get some." Where is a family that doesn't have any figgy pudding gonna go to get some on Christmas Eve (or Day)? If there's a Jewish deli open (which once saved my mother when she needed wild rice for Christmas dinner), something tells me they're not going to have figgy pudding, either. Is it even Kosher?
What's more, the person being sung to could easily say, "This is my house, and when I say you go, you go. Don't make me break out my Ralphie Red Ryder BB gun."
*
Even the songs that are about the original Christmas – the Christ Mass – don't always make sense. Again, I'll do these in alphabetical order.
In the 3rd verse, the shepherd boy says, "In your palace warm, mighty king, do you know what I know? A child, a child shivers in the cold. Let us bring him silver and gold." This is the Christmas song that gets my mother upset: She points out that, if the child is shivering in the cold, forget the precious metals, bring him (and his parents) something more precious: Blankets. One would think that the shepherd boy, himself almost certainly poor, would figure that out.
And how did the boy get into the king's palace, anyway? Not that I want to take the king's side against a poor shepherd boy, but I would like to know. Maybe, like King David started out as, the boy was a crafty little shepherd who found a way around a seemingly impossible situation.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and...
Good Christian Men, Rejoice. The former dates to the 1650s, with the author unknown. The latter is even older, going back to 1328, probably written by a German monk, Heinrich Seuse. Should these songs be gender-neutral? It's hard to do it for the former, unless you (or, should I say, "ye") want to make it, in the song's rhythm, "God rest ye merry gentlefolk" or "God rest ye merry Chris-ti-ans."
As for the latter, some have tried to make it "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice." It's fairer, but it just... doesn't... sound right. A similar effort is occasionally made to change a lyric in the Canadian National Anthem, "O Canada": "True patriot love in all thy sons command" becomes "...in all of us command."
There was a real Wenceslas, not quite a king, but Duke of Bohemia, born 907, died 935, assassinated by his brother (and, judging by his nickname, his total opposite), Boleslav the Cruel. And Wenceslas, too, has been declared a Saint, and is the patron saint of Bohemia, which is now in the Czech Republic.
The Little Drummer Boy. Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote this in 1941, and is best remembered by the 1958 hit rendition by The Harry Simeone Chorale. "The ox and ass kept time." Sometimes it's sung as, "The ox and lamb kept time," in case you don’t want to use the word "ass" around kids, even to mean "donkey."
You know, call me a relic, call me what you will, say I'm old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill... but the drummer is the one who's supposed to keep time! Why does the little drummer boy need the ox and ass (or lamb) to do it for him? I know, he's just a kid, and he's certainly not responsible for the lyric, he's just telling the story. But this is another dumb one.
O Little Town of Bethlehem. Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks. "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." Oh, really? Doesn't the Gospel have the angel saying to the shepherds, "Fear not"? Maybe the fears of all the years are dispelled in Bethlehem, but the point (or part of it) was that, with the birth of this child, there was less to fear.
Silent Night. Written for a Christmas pageant in Oberndorf, Austria, outside Mozart's hometown of Salzburg, in 1818, with lyrics by a priest named Joseph Mohr, and music by his choir director Franz Xaver Gruber.
We Three Kings. An American minister named John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote this in 1857. "Star of wonder, star of night." Great phrase, but there are no "stars of day."
Oh well. Regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, gender, your partner's gender, politics or even what teams you root for... for discrimination is the biggest humbug of them all...
He could have made it "Joyeux Noël," for French-speakers, including people in Quebec. He could have dovetailed the Spanish "Prospero año y felicidad" (A prosperous year and felicity/happiness) with the French, "Prosperité en l'an nouvelle" (Prosperity in the new year), which would have rhymed with "Joyeux Noël."
Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. What a terrible thing to have to think about at Christmastime! As B.J. Hunnicutt taught us on M*A*S*H, "A family's Christmas wreaths ought to be green, not black." On top of that, lemme tell ya somethin': If any reindeer had ever tried to run over my Grandma, she'd have popped him one, and then you'd know how he got the red nose!
Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. What a terrible thing to have to think about at Christmastime! As B.J. Hunnicutt taught us on M*A*S*H, "A family's Christmas wreaths ought to be green, not black." On top of that, lemme tell ya somethin': If any reindeer had ever tried to run over my Grandma, she'd have popped him one, and then you'd know how he got the red nose!
The original performers from 1979, Elmo and Patsy Shropshire (then married to each other) dropped a seemingly innocent couplet: "We're so very proud of Grandpa. He's been taking it so well. See him in there, watching football, drinking beer and playing cards with Cousin Mel." Then, in 1985, came the video, and "Cousin Mel" is revealed to be a considerably younger woman, probably named Melissa, Melanie, or Melody. And she might not be a real cousin. Could they have conspired to bump Grandma off for the chance to be together -- and for the insurance money?
Then, in 2000, came an animated TV special based on the song. As it turned out, while the evidence available to the other characters suggested that something awful happened to Grandma, she recovered from her incident, but with amnesia, and wandered off. To his credit, Santa finds her, takes her to the North Pole, and takes care of her until her memory comes back. And, yes, Cousin Mel is the villain of this version of the story.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane wrote this for the 1944 film Meet Me In St. Louis. "Make the Yuletide gay." Yeah, another one of those. Made even more problematic by the fact that the song was introduced by Judy Garland.
Holly Jolly Christmas. The song was written by Johnny Marks, and introduced by Burl Ives in the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which was based on another song that Marks wrote). It certainly seems jolly and innocuous enough -- until you get to the line, "Somebody waits for you. Kiss her once for me."
Bump that! If she's waiting for me, I'm kissing her for nobody but myself! It reminds me of George Carlin's rant about the line, "Give her my best." (Said rant is too risqué to discuss in a Christmas-themed post.)
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. British songwriter Tommie Connor wrote it in 1952, and it was sung by Jimmy Boyd, then 13 years old, and later to marry Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig. He should not be confused with the Jim Boyd who played J. Arthur Crank, Paul the Gorilla, and other characters on the 1971-77 PBS kids show The Electric Company.
Dumb Donald is so dumb! (How dumb is he?) He's so dumb, he appears to be unaware that the guy he sees in the Santa suit is actually his father! Or, worse, he appears to be not particularly troubled by the fact that his mother is kissing a man who (he thinks) is not her father. Either way, this is not a very bright kid.
Please, save the "Santa only comes once a year" joke. That, too, is too risqué.
To make matters worse, there's a version of this song sung by... the Jackson 5, back when they were first big. So, that explains Michael Jackson... I wonder if he ever asked a child to sit on his lap.
I'll Be Home For Christmas. Another one from Der Bingle, written in 1943 by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent, and it sounds like a soldier in World War II singing to his girl "on the home front."
"You can count on me," the singer says. But he closes by saying, "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." So, can she count on you, or not?
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. Written in 1951 by Meredith Willson, who went on to write the musical The Music Man.
"Take a look in the five-and-ten." Sadly, there are now very few five-and-ten-cent (or "five-and-dime") stores -- many of which were in chains. Woolworth's, J.J. Newberry's and McCrory's all closed in 2001. Now we have "dollar stores" -- or, as they're known in Britain, "poundshops."
Another line: "There's a tree in the grand hotel, one in the park as well." Well, I should hope there's a lot more than one tree in the park! I know, I know, Perry Como meant that one of the trees in the park was a Christmas tree.
It gets worse: "A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen." The gender stereotypes are troubling enough. But putting a gun in a kid's hand is completely irresponsible, especially now, with the Newtown Massacre happening so close to Christmas a few years ago.
Before Peter Billingsley starred in the 2022 sequel A Christmas Story Christmas, I wondered if I would one day see a version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past is a grown-up Ralphie Parker with an eye patch, saying, "See? I actually did shoot my eye out!"
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Oh, no you don't. Look at all the places that are closed on Christmas. If you need to buy something, you'll have to get it at 7-Eleven or Wawa or someplace like that. And you will have to get things. You think it's easy to shop for everyone you love for one day a year? Multiply that by 365! Song written in 1973 by Roy Wood, formerly of The Move, then with the band Wizzard.
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Edward Pola and George Wyle wrote it in 1963, for a Christmas album by Andy Williams. "There'll be scary ghost stories... " Uh, excuse me, gentlemen, but I think you're getting your holidays mixed up!
Another line: "There's a tree in the grand hotel, one in the park as well." Well, I should hope there's a lot more than one tree in the park! I know, I know, Perry Como meant that one of the trees in the park was a Christmas tree.
It gets worse: "A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen." The gender stereotypes are troubling enough. But putting a gun in a kid's hand is completely irresponsible, especially now, with the Newtown Massacre happening so close to Christmas a few years ago.
Before Peter Billingsley starred in the 2022 sequel A Christmas Story Christmas, I wondered if I would one day see a version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past is a grown-up Ralphie Parker with an eye patch, saying, "See? I actually did shoot my eye out!"
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Oh, no you don't. Look at all the places that are closed on Christmas. If you need to buy something, you'll have to get it at 7-Eleven or Wawa or someplace like that. And you will have to get things. You think it's easy to shop for everyone you love for one day a year? Multiply that by 365! Song written in 1973 by Roy Wood, formerly of The Move, then with the band Wizzard.
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Edward Pola and George Wyle wrote it in 1963, for a Christmas album by Andy Williams. "There'll be scary ghost stories... " Uh, excuse me, gentlemen, but I think you're getting your holidays mixed up!
True, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has ghosts in it, but how old were you when you stopped being scared of those ghosts? Even when I saw my 1st version of it -- the 1962 Mr. Magoo version, when I was about 6 or so, in the 1970s -- I wasn't scared of them.
Last Christmas. One of the more recent ones, from 1984. First of all, it's by Wham! Second of all... Do I even need a "second of all"? The lyrics certainly suggest that it's the first gay Christmas song: "A face on a lover with a fire in his heart, a man under cover but you tore me apart."
There are "blue Christmas" songs -- "blue" as in sad, not "blue" as in "blue language" -- but this one, even if the "man under cover" is the narrator, not his target, is lame as heck. And did I mention it's by Wham?
I'm definitely not the only ones who don't like it: Tomas and Hannah Mazzetti, a couple who, in spite of the surname, live in Sweden, hate the song so much, they're raising money to buy the rights to it, so they can prevent it from being played on the radio. According to George Michael's estate, the price is at least $15 million. Sounds like we're stuck with it.
Little Saint Nick. The Beach Boys' 1963 contribution to Christmas songs is a guilty pleasure of mine: I'm not a "car guy," but I love how they make Santa's sleigh sound like a hot rod. But they have a little problem with counting: "Haulin' through the snow at a frightenin' speed, with a half a dozen deer, with Rudy to lead." Half a dozen is 6. There's supposed to be 8 -- 9, counting Rudolph. In this song, Big Red is 2 reindeer short. Well, there is that hoary old joke about Comet staying home to clean the sink...
My Favorite Things. Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for the 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music, this song wouldn't appear to have anything to do with Christmas. But it's been included on Christmas albums since Jack Jones did it in 1964, a year before the film version starring Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp. Mary Martin was the first to play the role and sing the song onstage.
The lyrics do make mention of "brown paper packages tied up with strings." That suggests presents, but not necessarily Christmas presents. There's mentions of "sleigh bells" and "snowflakes," which suggests Winter, though not necessarily Christmas. And then there's "silver-white Winters that melt into Springs." Again, we're getting away from Christmas, in more ways than one.
Blame Andrews. No, not for the film. In 1961, she sang the song in a Christmas special for The Garry Moore Show on CBS. This was a few months after the avant-garde instrumental version by The John Coltrane Quartet debuted.
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. In 1958, Johnny Marks, author of the original "Rudolph" song, tried his hand at writing Christmas songs for the first generation of rock and roll fans. That year, he wrote this song, which became Brenda Lee's 1st hit, at age 13. She became a bigger star, having 2 Number 1 hits in 1960, leading to this song's re-release, and it hit Number 3.
In 2023, this song was brought back, and Billboard has it listed at Number 1 -- setting new records: 65 years from introduction to chart-top, breaking Mariah's record; 63 years between Number 1s for Lee, breaking Cher's record of 24; and, still alive and performing at age 78, she broke the record for oldest performer with a Number 1 hit, set by Louis Armstrong in 1964, with "Hello, Dolly!" at 62. Musically speaking, this was a Christmas miracle.
But is the song "problematic"? Not really. Marks throws as many seasonal clichés as possible into the lyrics, and includes the first line of "Deck the Halls," which was, of course, already in the public domain in 1958.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Johnny Marks' masterpiece, written in 1949 to connect with a 1939 advertising campaign, and sung by Gene Autry, "The Singing Cowboy." Oy, where to begin with this one?
First, "All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names." Reindeer bullies at the North Pole. "Then one foggy Christmas Eve," Rudolph's prominent proboscis saves Christmas. "Then how the reindeer loved him." What a lousy bunch of fur-covered front-runners. I wonder if any of them ever said, "I'm sorry."
Someone who was once a friend and a fellow Yankee-themed blogger (but is no longer either, both by their choice) liked to once point out that, in the 1964 TV special based on the song, the story gets worse before it gets better: Even Santa himself gets on Rudolph's case – and on that of Donner, who in the story is the lead reindeer on the sleigh and Rudolph's father, for essentially passing on a genetic mutation (of which Donner himself appears to be only a carrier).
This is not one of Santa's better pop-culture representations. But, remember, this story isn't about Santa, it's about Rudolph. And Sam the Snowman (voice of Burl Ives) is giving you his perception of what happened. Sam might be an unreliable narrator.
Also, if you ever hear Dean Martin's version, you might note that both the singer and the subject are known for having a red nose, albeit with very different causes.
Run, Rudolph, Run. (That's the title, while the lyrics say, "Run, run, Rudolph.") The same year that Marks wrote "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," he cranked out "Run, Rudolph, Run," and gave it to Chuck Berry.
Elvis Presley may have been the 1st rocker to record a Christmas song, with "Blue Christmas" the year before; but it was written in 1948, by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson, and was first a hit the next year for country singer Ernest Tubb. Even Elvis' 1957 version hardly sounds like a rock and roll song. In contrast, the Chucker went out of his way to make "Run, Run, Rudolph" sound like a Chuck Berry song, and it works great. That's the (Johnny B.) good news.
The bad news is that the lyrics reinforce gender stereotypes. First, we have Santa asking a boy what he wants for Christmas, and he wants a guitar. No problem there. Then they have Santa asking a girl what she wants, and she wants a doll. In the Ike Age, this didn't raise too many hackles. Now, it does.
The bad news is that the lyrics reinforce gender stereotypes. First, we have Santa asking a boy what he wants for Christmas, and he wants a guitar. No problem there. Then they have Santa asking a girl what she wants, and she wants a doll. In the Ike Age, this didn't raise too many hackles. Now, it does.
In 2006, Whitney Wolanin, then just 16 years old, recorded a new version, with the genders reversed: The girl wants the guitar, and the boy wants the doll.
Santa Baby. Ah, the joy of Christmas, where everybody wants something. Usually several somethings. As Kanye West would have said, back when he said nothing more offensive than this, "Now, I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger... "
But this song is also problematic on a practical level. A '54 convertible? Cars were huge in the Fifties. A yacht? A duplex? The ring could fit, the deed to the platinum mine could be folded up, but how exactly is Santa gonna get all that expensive loot into her stocking? He’s magic, the stocking is not! Okay, she does ask Santa to "slip a sable under the tree for me." I just got carried away, thinking Santa is only responsible for the stuff in the stockings.
Then again, considering the 1953 original, written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer, was sung by Eartha Kitt, maybe it's a long, slinky nylon stocking. As Bill Maher (on whose former show Politically Incorrect she guested a few times) would say, "Easy, Catwoman!"
To make matters worse, Eartha ended up dying on a Christmas Day, in 2008. James Brown, who recorded an album called Funky Christmas, also died on December 25, 2 years earlier. And the aforementioned Dean Martin died on December 25, 1994.
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934, this is another one for whom the best known version is by Gene Autry, in 1947, probably as a follow-up to a song Autry wrote and sang the year before, "Here Comes Santa Claus."
Santa Baby. Ah, the joy of Christmas, where everybody wants something. Usually several somethings. As Kanye West would have said, back when he said nothing more offensive than this, "Now, I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger... "
But this song is also problematic on a practical level. A '54 convertible? Cars were huge in the Fifties. A yacht? A duplex? The ring could fit, the deed to the platinum mine could be folded up, but how exactly is Santa gonna get all that expensive loot into her stocking? He’s magic, the stocking is not! Okay, she does ask Santa to "slip a sable under the tree for me." I just got carried away, thinking Santa is only responsible for the stuff in the stockings.
Then again, considering the 1953 original, written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer, was sung by Eartha Kitt, maybe it's a long, slinky nylon stocking. As Bill Maher (on whose former show Politically Incorrect she guested a few times) would say, "Easy, Catwoman!"
To make matters worse, Eartha ended up dying on a Christmas Day, in 2008. James Brown, who recorded an album called Funky Christmas, also died on December 25, 2 years earlier. And the aforementioned Dean Martin died on December 25, 1994.
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934, this is another one for whom the best known version is by Gene Autry, in 1947, probably as a follow-up to a song Autry wrote and sang the year before, "Here Comes Santa Claus."
The Four Seasons had a hit with it in 1963, with lead singer Frankie Valli breaking into falsetto as he usually did. The same year, The Crystals sang it on the Phil Spector album, with 2 extra shouts of "San... ta Claus is comin' to town!" Bruce Springsteen would sort-of copy this version in 1978. Ray Charles did a soulful version in 1985. But the Autry version is still the most familiar.
This is probably the most oft-cited problematic Christmas song, because of the line, "He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake." Uh-oh, this makes Santa sound like something out of a George Orwell novel: "Big Brother is watching you."
Silver Bells. Jay Livingston and Ray Evans wrote it for the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid, where it was sung by bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. They had originally called it "Tinkle Bells," until Jay's wife said, "Are you out of your mind? Do you know what the word 'tinkle' is?"
With the title fixed, there's nothing wrong with this one, as far as I can tell. In fact, it's my favorite secular Christmas song. But there's one version of it that's not... quite... right. I'm sorry, but Wilson Pickett? The Wicked Pickett should not have been recording Christmas songs! It would have been like asking Karen Carpenter to sing "In the Midnight Hour"! (Then again, she did cover "Please Mr. Postman.")
And how neat -- and weird -- was it in December 2010, on Saturday Night Live, to hear Jeff Bridges, not known as a singer (though he and brother Beau did play pianists in The Fabulous Baker Boys), duet on this song with Cookie Monster of Sesame Street?
(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays. Every place in this country has people trying to get back there for Christmas, because it's "home" to them. I have no issue with that. This song, written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman, and first done in 1954 by Perry Como, first mentions that the man trying to get home to Pennsylvania (Como's home State), is starting out (or, perhaps, stopping along the way) in Tennessee. No problem there, either.
But then he mentions people going "to Dixie's sunny shore." Even if you're not bothered by this glorification of the South (and I am), it doesn't fit with the whole "Christmas as Winter Wonderland" idea.
Also, when he sings, "From Atlantic to Pacific, gee, the traffic is terrific," whether he realizes it or not, he's using "terrific" in the original sense: Inspiring terror. If you've ever done Christmas shopping in Bergen County, New Jersey, where stores aren't permitted to open on Sundays, on the last Saturday before Christmas, you will understand. Christmas-shopping traffic and Christmas-travel traffic are not "terrific" as in "wonderful" or "jolly."
The Twelve Days of Christmas. The earliest known version of this one was published in 1780. As someone pointed out to me, this is the "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" of Christmas songs.
First of all, where did your true love get all that stuff? Second of all, where are you going to put it all? I mentioned George Carlin before, but I wonder if he ever incorporated this song into his bit "A Place For My Stuff."
A partridge, 2 doves, 3 hens, 4 calling birds, 6 geese, 7 swans? That's a lot of birds. Think of the mess! Five golden rings? I can see getting one, but 5? One for each finger on the hand? That doesn't make any sense, unless the singer is Elvis, Liberace, or Elton John. Or maybe Pink, or Pauley Perrette in character as Dr. Abby Sciuto of NCIS.
Six geese a-laying? Who uses goose eggs? Maybe one of the geese is "the goose that lays the golden egg." Eight maids a-milking? Maybe she already has 8 cows, but this is not specified in the song. Without cows, the milkmaids will have nothing to do.
Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming? I hope they're all rented, because I can't imagine having them around every day, especially if none of them does anything else. Maybe one of the dancing ladies is also one of the milkmaids, and one of the leaping lords is also a piper or a drummer.
Also, what's so special about a partridge, in that it's the centerpiece of the song? I looked it up: In Greek mythology, in a fit of jealous rage, Daedalus threw his nephew Perdix off a hill, and the gods turned him into the bird in question. Hence, a partridge makes his nest in a tree that's not too high off the ground, like a pear tree. In French, the bird is a "perdrix," pronounced "pair-DREE," which may have confused an Englishman.
But that still doesn't explain what any of these varieties of bird has to do with Christmas. The only explanation I can think of for any of them is that a goose is the traditional bird to serve as Christmas dinner in England. After all, you don't need all 6 geese still alive to lay the eggs.
There's also a theory that "five gold rings," which became "five golden rings" in America, was originally "five goldspinks," another name for a five-ringed pheasant. If true, it would explain why 6 of the 1st 7 were game birds common to England, but 1 wasn't: Actually, all 7 were game birds, usable as food; while the 8th gift was the maids a-milking, also providing food; and the last 4 were all entertainers. Also, the "calling birds" may originally have been "colly birds," meaning "coal black."
Up On the House Top. "First comes the stocking of little Will. Oh, just see, what a glorious fill. Give him a hammer and lots of tacks. Also a ball, and a whip that cracks."
Huh? Either the songwriter, Benjamin Hanby in 1864, just threw together a few words that rhyme, without thinking about how they would sound; or Santa has his priorities way out of whack; or little Will is into, uh, things that are too risqué to mention on Christmas. Maybe he's not so little.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The 2nd verse begins, "Now, bring us some figgy pudding." Have you ever eaten figgy pudding? Have you ever even seen figgy pudding? Until November 23, 2016, neither had I.
But, that day, on the way down to our Thanksgiving weekend getaway in Ocean City, Maryland, we stopped off in the Philadelphia suburb of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Across the street from the British Chip Shop, producer of fabulous pub food, there is a store owned by the same people, the English Gardener Gift Shop, which sells British- (English, Scottish and Welsh) and Irish-themed items, including products normally available only over there, like Walker's crisps (what we, not they, would call "chips"), Branston pickle (a chutney), and Irn Bru (a Scottish variation on orange soda).
Among the British delicacies they sell is, yes, figgy pudding -- which, like Yorkshire pudding, black pudding, white pudding, plum pudding and even blood pudding, is basically what the British call a fruitcake. None of them resemble what we might call chocolate, rice or tapioca pudding.
The 4th and final verse says, "We won't go until we get some." Where is a family that doesn't have any figgy pudding gonna go to get some on Christmas Eve (or Day)? If there's a Jewish deli open (which once saved my mother when she needed wild rice for Christmas dinner), something tells me they're not going to have figgy pudding, either. Is it even Kosher?
What's more, the person being sung to could easily say, "This is my house, and when I say you go, you go. Don't make me break out my Ralphie Red Ryder BB gun."
*
Even the songs that are about the original Christmas – the Christ Mass – don't always make sense. Again, I'll do these in alphabetical order.
Ding, Dong, Merrily On High. This is another new entry for me. George Ratcliffe Woodward wrote this 100 years ago, in 1924. It contains the words, "Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis!" This is reminiscent of "Angels We Have Heard On High," with its refrain of "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" (Glory to God in the highest.) "Hosanna" is a reference to saving, thus to Jesus as "Savior."
Like "Angels We Have Heard On High," the "Gloria" is dragged out, with notes too high for most people to sing. Did we really need a second song like that?
Someone also pointed out that the grammar was wrong: Instead of "Hosanna in excelsis," it should be "In excelsis Hosanna."
Do You Hear What I Hear? Léon Schlienger, perhaps getting into the Christmas spirit by writing as "Noël Regney," wrote the lyrics, and Gloria Shayne the music, in 1962, in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, leading to the king in the song, asking, "Pray for peace, people everywhere."
Ignore for a moment that "Do you hear what I hear?" is from the 2nd verse, thus the title should be "Do You See What I See?" Ignore also, as previously stated, the likelihood (based on Scripture itself) that Jesus was not born in Winter, on December 25 or otherwise.
In the 3rd verse, the shepherd boy says, "In your palace warm, mighty king, do you know what I know? A child, a child shivers in the cold. Let us bring him silver and gold." This is the Christmas song that gets my mother upset: She points out that, if the child is shivering in the cold, forget the precious metals, bring him (and his parents) something more precious: Blankets. One would think that the shepherd boy, himself almost certainly poor, would figure that out.
And how did the boy get into the king's palace, anyway? Not that I want to take the king's side against a poor shepherd boy, but I would like to know. Maybe, like King David started out as, the boy was a crafty little shepherd who found a way around a seemingly impossible situation.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and...
Good Christian Men, Rejoice. The former dates to the 1650s, with the author unknown. The latter is even older, going back to 1328, probably written by a German monk, Heinrich Seuse. Should these songs be gender-neutral? It's hard to do it for the former, unless you (or, should I say, "ye") want to make it, in the song's rhythm, "God rest ye merry gentlefolk" or "God rest ye merry Chris-ti-ans."
As for the latter, some have tried to make it "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice." It's fairer, but it just... doesn't... sound right. A similar effort is occasionally made to change a lyric in the Canadian National Anthem, "O Canada": "True patriot love in all thy sons command" becomes "...in all of us command."
Jewish comedian Allan Sherman turned "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" into "God Rest Ye, Jerry Mandelbaum," a song about a traveling salesman.
Good King Wenceslas. This song was written in 1853, with lyrics by John Mason Neale and music by Thomas Helmore. While the song is certainly telling of genuine Christian behavior on the part of its subject, has nothing to do with Christmas. In fact, it takes place the next day: December 26, in addition to Boxing Day in the British Commonwealth, is St. Stephen's Day, the anniversary of the death of an early Christian martyr, and thus his "feast day" -- hence, "Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen."
There was a real Wenceslas, not quite a king, but Duke of Bohemia, born 907, died 935, assassinated by his brother (and, judging by his nickname, his total opposite), Boleslav the Cruel. And Wenceslas, too, has been declared a Saint, and is the patron saint of Bohemia, which is now in the Czech Republic.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. John Wesley, the founder of what became the United Methodist Church, and his brother, Charles Wesley, were prodigious writers of hymns. John gets most of the remembrance, but Charles is the one who got one of his hymns into the "canon" of Christmas carols, adapting a melody by Felix Mendelssohn and publishing it in 1739.
Aside from being the only time most of us ever heard the archaic word "hark," meaning "listen," the only problem with this one is that some notes are really hard to reach.
I Saw Three Ships. This is a new entry, not in any previous edition. It was first published in 1833, but could be as much as 200 years older. The singers says he saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning. He asks what was in those ships, and provides the answer: "Our Saviour Christ and His Lady." No, not Mary Magdalene, but Mary, his mother. Then he asks where those ships were sailing, and provides the answer: "O they sailed into Bethlehem."
I Saw Three Ships. This is a new entry, not in any previous edition. It was first published in 1833, but could be as much as 200 years older. The singers says he saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning. He asks what was in those ships, and provides the answer: "Our Saviour Christ and His Lady." No, not Mary Magdalene, but Mary, his mother. Then he asks where those ships were sailing, and provides the answer: "O they sailed into Bethlehem."
Yeah, not gonna happen, unless it's another one of Jesus' miracles. The nearest body of water is 20 miles to the east of the modern Church of the Nativity, and it's the salt-filled Dead Sea. The Mediterranean Sea is 46 miles to the west.
Joy to the World. With lyrics written in 1719 by Isaac Watts, and later set to a melody written by George Frideric Handel, there isn't much wrong with this one. But it shares a title with a song that country singer Hoyt Axton wrote, and which the band Three Dog Night took to Number 1 in 1971. Axton has died, but just about everybody from 3DN is still alive. I'd like to hear them sing the carol of the same title, just for the novelty.
The Little Drummer Boy. Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote this in 1941, and is best remembered by the 1958 hit rendition by The Harry Simeone Chorale. "The ox and ass kept time." Sometimes it's sung as, "The ox and lamb kept time," in case you don’t want to use the word "ass" around kids, even to mean "donkey."
You know, call me a relic, call me what you will, say I'm old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill... but the drummer is the one who's supposed to keep time! Why does the little drummer boy need the ox and ass (or lamb) to do it for him? I know, he's just a kid, and he's certainly not responsible for the lyric, he's just telling the story. But this is another dumb one.
O Little Town of Bethlehem. Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks. "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." Oh, really? Doesn't the Gospel have the angel saying to the shepherds, "Fear not"? Maybe the fears of all the years are dispelled in Bethlehem, but the point (or part of it) was that, with the birth of this child, there was less to fear.
Silent Night. Written for a Christmas pageant in Oberndorf, Austria, outside Mozart's hometown of Salzburg, in 1818, with lyrics by a priest named Joseph Mohr, and music by his choir director Franz Xaver Gruber.
The entire song suggests that it was quiet and peaceful when Jesus was born. But the Gospels make no mention of whether Mary screamed over labor pains, or whether baby Jesus cried. The Rosary Prayer, the "Hail Mary," states, "Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" -- suggesting that both "yon virgin mother and child" may have been granted holy exemptions to the usual pains each would suffer at birth.
We Three Kings. An American minister named John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote this in 1857. "Star of wonder, star of night." Great phrase, but there are no "stars of day."
Yes, there is such a thing as "the morning star," but that's usually the planet Venus. There are people who believe that the Star of Bethlehem could only have been a "conjunction" of at least two planets (probably Venus and either Mars or Jupiter), looking like one big, very bright star. And, at the time of the birth of Christ, it might not have been known that these planets which looked like stars weren't actually stars. Even a king might not have known that. It's also been suggested that it was a particularly bright comet.
Ah, but the "three kings" were never actually called kings in the Gospels. They were, however, called "wise men" in The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2. But even their number isn't divulged: It's presumed that there were 3, since there were 3 gifts that they presented: Gold, frankincense and myrrh. One man, one gift? That seems reasonable, but neither the Gospel nor the song specifically says that. They have also been called "magi," which suggests magic, and led to the title of O. Henry's Christmas story, "The Gift of the Magi."
They have often been called scientists, astronomers or astrologers. If they were any of those things, and the Star of Bethlehem was a planetary conjunction, or a comet, then they would have known that. But, as far as modern humanity knows, none of them wrote their observations down. We don't even know their names, although modern retellings of the First Christmas story have assigned them names, which may or may not be historically plausible: Gaspard, provider of gold; Melchior, provider of frankincense; and Balthazar, provider of myrrh.
One of those modern retellings is Amahl and the Night Visitors, the 1st opera ever composed specifically for television, by Gian Carlo Menotti, airing on NBC on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1951. It was the premiere of the series Hallmark Hall of Fame -- and, at just 45 minutes, was the first "Hallmark Christmas Movie." It didn't follow any of the tropes of the modern Hallmark holiday-season romantic comedies, but, by the strictest of definitions, it counts.
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Oh well. Regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, gender, your partner's gender, politics or even what teams you root for... for discrimination is the biggest humbug of them all...
May your days be merry and bright. Be good, for goodness' sake. God bless us, every one. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Sleep in heavenly peace.
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