Christmas Carol Rebellion

from allisonlibrary.org

I love holiday music, although because of way they elicit nostalgia, I can only listen to carols for about an hour before I have to switch to some other kind of music for a while. I've a CD called "Celtic Tidings" (unrelated to "women" and "thunder") that we like, and Mannheim Steamroller and Canadian Brass collections. Classical music, like Bach’s Christmas Oratorio or Handel’s Messiah, and music by Mendelssohn, Torelli, Schuetz, Vaughan Williams, etc., are favorites in December.

Here are some "bah humbug yet lighthearted" thoughts: What is your least favorite holiday song----or songs that annoy you? Of course, there are all kinds of odd Chritsmas songs, like “I Want Eddie Fisher for Christmas,” “I Farted on Santa’s Lap (Now Christmas is Gonna Stink for Me)”, “Leroy the Redneck Reindeer,” “Santa’s a Fat Bitch” by Insane Clown Posse, and numerous others....

I’ve really disliked “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” this year. It’s stuck in my head too much. I always think the lyrics are positive and thus need a more upbeat melody. Sure enough, when I looked up the song, it originally had a rather downbeat lyric (written for the sad situation in the movie Meet Me In St. Louis. The author changed the words at the urging of Judy Garland and others, but the melancholy melody remained.  

“We Need a Little Christmas” has also been irritating this year. "A little Christmas"?----I’m on sensory overload already! The words make sense in the song’s original context, the musical Mame, where the family is struggling.

I never like the artificial-sounding lyrics of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”: snowman/No, man, conspire/fire. That song benefits from its original setting, too: times when country parsons traveled among communities to do weddings for couples who didn’t belong to a church, like the song’s couple who built a snowman and, somehow, thereby decided to get married.

"Santa Baby"---cute the first few times, less so later (although Eartha Kitt is awesome). I learned "Little Drummer Boy" as a kid and thought it was so moving! Now, it's performed so often.... Interestingly, an online source indicates those two songs are the only Christmas "hits" written by women.

I don't care for “I Wonder as I Wander” because I've heard it too often in church settings, not always with skillful singers. I thought the same about “O Holy Night” for a while, but I got a reprieve from hearing so often and so I began to like it again. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" is a similar song: my daughter said she'd had enough carols that day when she listened to a bad arrangement of that one.

I love “The First Noel” but it’s melody goes up and down all the time. It has the same time signature as a waltz, and I don't care for waltz music. (Johann Strauss makes me scream.) By the end of verse 5 of "The First Noel," I’m swaying a little to the beat and thinking, “This tune is so tedious!”

I liked "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" as a kid, until I thought about the premise---he's bullied because he's different, then he's promoted ahead of everyone else, and somehow that increases his popularity? …

I like “White Christmas” but it has set up that foolish yearly expectation that Christmas Day “should” be snowy to be a proper Christmas---which, of course, it may or may not be. The seldom used introduction to the song has the singer feeling wistful because he lives in snow-free Beverly Hills.

All this has to do with taste, preferences, and memories. I love Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," and also the song "Silver Bells," because I connect them with the holiday decorations in my small hometown when I was a kid. But my daughter doesn’t like “Sleigh Ride” because her high school band played it so often, and she finds “Silver Bells” maudlin. I totally get it. Which Christmas songs are your favorites? Which do you avoid if possible?