So, I've been listening to Christmas music the past, oh, month or so, right? Two songs have really been sticking in my craw: "Do They Know It's Christmas" by the collective BandAid and "Happy Christmas" by John Lennon, mainly for the unholy amounts of vainglorious moral superiority exuded from everyone involved with either project. The magic of Christmas music is that it's background - you can hear pretty much any version of "Silent Night" or "Deck the Halls" or "Jingle Bells" and know the words and let it gently play in the background. Not these two, though...
"There won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime" - NO SHIT SHERLOCK. It's a bloody desert! Not to mention that the vast majority of Africans don't celebrate Christmas to begin with! GAH! If smug were a fuel, this song and everyone associated with it could power my truck for the next 75 billion miles. What's really stunning is the video - in an effort to raise money for starving people in Africa, there's footage of stars arriving at the studio in limousines. Hell, the haircare bill for that 4 minute video could have fed several African nations for a year.
As for Happy Christmas, I guess it's just Lennon continuing the anti-war activism of the 60s into the 1970s with the "War is Over" part. I guess what makes it so irritating is that the assumption is that the rest of us want war - that only Lennon and his compatriots are enlightened enough to want an end to war. "Only the dead have seen the end of war" - generally credited to Plato over three hundred years before the first Christmas. No one wants war. Sometimes, though, it is unavoidable, a tragic testimony to the human condition and our tendency to split into tribes.
Don't worry, I won't leave you with either of those two paeans to self-righteousness. Oh no, I'll close with two of my very favorite Christmas songs:
George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyer's "Rock & Roll Christmas" - complete with John Lee Hooker as Santa Claus. Rockin'!
And it wouldn't be Christmas without this one:
And a beer [PAUSE] iiiinnn a tree. Classic!
What are your favorite (or least favorite) Christmas songs?
That is all.
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That's a tough one, I must have 45 Christmas CDs, but here are three favorites:
Stephen Siktberg : Christmas Guitar
John Bayless : Christmas Rhapsody
Schooner Fare :Home for the Holidays
Many a pleasant memory from watching Schooner Fare around this time of year.
I put 5 CDs on and hit shuffle -- it is delightful.
Jay,
For those like me who are of The Tribe, does Adam Sandler's "Eight Crazy Nights" count for anything? As for the sanctimony, you're spot-on.
The instrumentals. Then I can make up my own self-serving lyrics. Why help reality when fantasy is easy to fix?
Sleigh Ride. The song has a whip, man.
Serious song: Silent Night, of course.
Humorous: 'The Twelve Starcraft Days of Christmas' by the voice actors for Blizzard.
On the first day of Christmas, Blizzard gave to me: a brand new SCV...
Any Christmas songs done by:
Mannheim Steamroller - Their version of Silent Night is simply the most emotional piece I've ever heard...
Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Gary Hoey - He does excellent shred-guitar versions of Christmas songs.
Dragon
Why Spın̈al Tap, of course!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl6L5sjRz2E
Little Drummer Boy is my favorite. It expresses the true meaning of Christ's Mass perfectly. And if that song offends someone, tough. Maybe they should stop trying to get the State to interfere with the Church. Perhaps the Commies and the Jihadis need a lesson in the meaning of the "Free Exercise Thereof".
I'm with you on your 2 worst Christmas songs, by the way.
Hard to choose favorites, but I prefer instrumentals, chorals, or performers such as Josh Groban and Charlotte Church. What I really dislike are current or former pop stars singing them, especially when they stamp their own personal styles onto the song. It exposes the limits of their abilities and disrespects the song. I guess I'm too much the traditionalist.
Fay McKay, "12 Daze of Christmas." I damn near pissed myself the first time I heard it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFb-vepuM8
That great Walt Kelly classic, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie."
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