Lorna’s Top 10 Least Hated Christmas Songs
December 19th, 2008 by Lorna Bracewell in Lorna Bracewell, News, Top-10
I am posting this from the hell that is the Baltimore/Washington International airport at Christmas time. I cannot think of a worse time of year to be traveling. If the hordes of amateur travelers uninitiated in the mysteries of TSA procedures don’t get you, then the nauseatingly sweet stench of their Starbucks’ gingerbread lattes will. And just when you think you’ve made it - you’re at your gate with your black coffee and the stale Glazed Cake Munchkins you got at Dunkin Donuts the night before - the real onslaught begins: “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock…” ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
In honor of the incessant seasonal serenade that is driving me swiftly to the edge of sanity, here’s a top 10 list of the Christmas songs I hate the least. (Let’s face it, none of us really like any of them.)
Just one more thing before I begin: this will be my last post for Tampa Calling. As soon as I’m finished, I’m going to hang myself with the strap from my carry-on bag.
10. White Christmas
I’m a Floridian which means I was raised on stories of how my forefathers fled the frigid north to avoid ever having one of these again. I derive a sort of sick pleasure knowing that I’ll be slathering on coconut-scented tanning oil and drinking margaritas this Christmas while the rest of Christendom shivers.
9. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
I’ve been substituting “tater tots” for “tiny tots” for as long as I can remember. It always makes me chuckle.
8. Santa Claus is coming to Town
A stupid and vaguely creepy Christmas song, but I dig the way the Boss does it. He can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.
7. The Hallelujah Chorus
The next time you hear this one, pretend they’re singing it about you. It’s pretty great.
6. Carol of the Bells
I think this song is really some sort of Buddhist koan. I’ve yet to hear an arrangement played on bells of any kind…
5. River
I hate to denigrate this Joni Mitchell masterpiece by labeling it a Christmas song. It’s great on Halloween, the 4th of July and Yom Kippur, but it resonates particularly powerfully during the Christmas season.
4. Blue Christmas
I prefer the Elvis version. They call him ”King” for a reason. I’m a lesbian who was born 6 years after the man died but I still feel like he’s singing to me.
3. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
This subtle and melancholic little tune offers a much-needed reprieve from the maudlin sentiments and arrangements of most Christmas songs.
2. Let it Snow
There should totally be more Christmas songs about doing it.
1. Hark the Herald Angels Sing
I can’t believe they play this on the radio! Don’t they say the average American reads at, like, a 5th grade level or something? There is no way we know what these words mean.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:01 am
“I can’t believe they play this on the radio! Don’t they say the average American reads at, like, a 5th grade level or something? There is no way we know what these words mean.”
I’ve always thought this would be a great song to request if I ever open my door to carolers, so I can listen in anticipation for wrong lyrics. I have wondered if this makes me a little sadistic.
The song was written in the eighteenth century, when people had need of strange words, such as those found in this song, to understand the world around them. Prior to television and the Internet, I hear that people had to rely on pieces of paper sewn together in crude binders for their entertainment. They called these rude things books, which I believe to be a portmanteau of the words bifocal and look, which is apparently how they deciphered the content therein. The bifocal was an arcane device used to correct vision before Lasik, with two settings for near and far. Modern scholars aren’t really sure how the bifocal worked, a lead researcher in the field was quoted with saying, “Dis makes the world fuzzy, can’t see television!”
Since it was difficult to capture explosions and gratuitous ankle shots using the primitive glyphs within these books, they had to devise colorful allegory and words which were beyond the monosyllabic grunts we have come to rely upon. It was a savage time, fraught with peril.
Pardon me as I give my television a hug. It gets jealous when I speak of the Before Time.
December 21st, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I think there are only two Christmas songs I genuinely like: “O Holy Night” and “Santa Claus is Watching You”.
Yeah, I know.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
i cant believe u dont have silent night up here tsk tsk tsk :-P
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I’ve always really liked “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” even though it’s totally maudlin and I ended up singing it to myself and crying while painting the railing of a staircase in a Russian orphanage on an extended mission trip. (It’s amazing I didn’t need therapy for that.)
Either way, I can’t figure out why so many renditions leave out that little beginning tag of “I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love, even more than I usually do”…because, honestly, that’s the best part of the song.
In other news, I think the song “Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney” by Ella Fitzgerald to be the most unintentionally weird Christmas song out there.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I agree..with everything…except the Boss…you are the bomb.