Monday, December 20, 2004

Christmas Music, revisited

After listing some of my favorite CDs of Christmas music the other day, I see a couple of newer posts about Blogistan about Christmas tunes: Lynn Sislo and John Scalzi opine about certain Christmas tunes. Lynn likes "Carol of the Bells", which I detest, and John detests Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad", which I like a whole lot. Go figure.

My favorite Christmas song, generally speaking, is "Little Drummer Boy". This one seems pretty darned hard to mess up; I've heard some indifferent renditions of it, but thus far none that have me screaming, "Make it stop!" And for my money, the Bing Crosby and David Bowie duet on this song is my favorite Christmas song, ever.

In his post, John poses this hypothetical:

Your Christmas gift is the ability to expunge one highly annoying yet popular Christmas song from the history of the world. Which one is it?


Strangely, I wouldn't choose "Carol of the Bells", even though I can't stand it. There are a lot of Christmas tunes I hate more. In fact, there are too many Christmas tunes I hate more. Lots more. There's one that received incessant airplay a couple of years ago, even though I haven't heard it a single time this year, something about Christmas wishes coming true, in which some guy sings a verse or two of some syrupy Christmas ballad, with little kids reciting their oh-so-precious wishes from Santa in between the verses. Gack. It takes a lot to redline my "Sentiment" meter, but that one blows the needle right out the back of a gauge.

And then there's that f***ing song with Alvin and the rest of the Annoying Rodents Chipmonks. I'm sure this was cute once. But that was before I was born. The window of opportunity is up, and the Chipmonks should probably be silenced for all eternity.

But that one isn't even my pick for a Christmas Song whose memory I would banish to the lowest depth of Hell, a song that would send me to its writer's grave that I might dig up his bones and salt the earth about his grave for a one-mile radius. That song would be "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth", a song that fails to be cute, fails to be funny, fails to be interesting. The only thing this song doesn't fail to do is make me vomit.

Well, that was sure cathartic! And what's Christmas, if not a season for some well-timed venting of the spleen?

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