Bah, humbug!

A few years ago, I wrote a list of my favorite Christmas songs, and why I loved the ones I did. 

A few days ago, Sweetie almost pissed herself, thinking we were going to get into a car accident because I screamed NO and made a sudden movement, all to keep myself from having to hear Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time."

I don'y know why I have such a visceral reaction to that song in particular, but let's get right to it: there ARE some Christmas songs I hate. 

McCartney's pile of tinsel-covered poo is emblematic of what I dislike about the rest of his solo and/or Wings stuff: it's catchy, sappy, and devoid of any of the conflict and intrigue of the Beatles' music. You can practically hear the cash register noises as he gets royalties, but does anyone LIKE it? Does anyone find it MEANINGFUL? Can you build fond Christmas memories around "The word is out About the town So lift a glass Ahh, don't look down"? Also, did you KNOW those were the lyrics, or did you, like me, process that whole song by remembering only "SIM-ply HAV-ing a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME" over and over?

Around this time of year, my friends on Facebook start posting videos by Pentatonix, an a capella group of sincere children who are perhaps a small cult. They sing beautifully, and they often take on the classic religious carols I actually like. But they do so while smiling beauty queen smiles and looking admiringly heavenward (that is, if they're not directing their soulful gaze DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA). 

Sidebar -- just after high school, I accompanied some friends of mine to an event at Rancho Seco park. It's a lovely park 45 minutes or an hour outside of town with a lake, and it is perhaps best known locally for also being the site of a nuclear power generating station. I didn't drive, so Mike was driving, and his girlfriend Dawn (who was my friend) was in the passenger seat. Both were LDS (Mormon), which wasn't unusual. Although I myself was a godless heathen, I attended a school with a fairly large Mormon population and was friends with several. I even attended a Mormon dance once. Anyway, Dawn was (and is) a lovely person, but scarred, as so many people are, by strict adherence to and belief in her very religious upbringing, and their relationship carried some disturbing hallmarks of what would become a very troubling marriage. Anyway, we were driving along on this warm day on the way to the park, and the song Creep by Radiohead came on. I liked the song then and still do. We all sang along to it. But of course, when the vulgarity passed, they quieted. And then the lines, "I want a perfect body... I want a perfect soul" came up. To my surprise, Dawn's voice rose in volume significantly, she squeezed her eyes closed sincerely, she gesticulated -- she sang "I want a perfect soul" like it was a gospel song. She MEANT that shit. (To be fair, that may be how I sang the line "what the hell am I doing here?" shortly thereafter.)

And THAT is the vibe I get from Pentatonix. They want a perfect soul. They will take this song and smoosh out of it a RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD ALMIGHTY IN THE HIGHEST. And then they will stare at you to make sure you get it, too. Do you get it? Do you really? Mary, did you know? In Excelsis Deo? The Lord is come. LET EAAARRTH RECEIIIIVVEEE HER KIIIING!!! (Eyeballs you meaningfully through the camera.)

I like a lot of R&B music, but I have very little patience for one of the hallmarks of the genre: melisma. Melisma is that thing where you sing one syllable but a bunch of different notes. Do you know the song "Let's Hear it For the Boy?" When she sings "Let's give the boy a haa-ah-ah-ah-he-ya-a-and," that's melisma. If it's built into a song*, I usually don't mind it. It's when you're expecting a song to have a certain meter and number of syllables, and it diverges wildly from that that I feel it's kind of cringe-worthy. Think of "America the Beautiful" when they go "Ame-hey--hey-heerica." There are a lot of singers that do this to Christmas music, and I start flipping stations. We heard "Jojo" the other day singing something like "Chestnuts ra-hoasting on an O-o-whoa-whoa-ho-pen fay-ya-ya-ya-yuh-her." No thank you. 
(* A Christmas song with melisma built in? Gloria In Excelsis Deo!)

"Do they know it's Christmas" has gotten a lot of well-deserved hate from better writers than I, but I will just add my note: I like the IDEA of Band-Aid raising money for charity, but the lyrics could not have been worse if they were intentionally trying to write a parody of this kind of thing. It's sounds like Lucille Bluth could have sung it.

Lucille Bluth

"And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life

Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"

First of all, Africa is quite large, and parts of it definitely will get snow this year and every year. Ever heard of "The Snow of Kilimanjaro"? Well, it's IN AFRICA.

No rivers flow? Not even the NILE AND THE CONGO? Jesus, pick up a globe or something. This bitch read Heart of Darkness and wrote a Christmas song. Just kidding -- Heart of Darkness prominently features rivers!

And do they know it's Christmas? Well, after we spent decades colonizing their asses and sending missionaries to convert them to Christianity, yes, I'd guess that many of them do!

Further, it is the Edward Gorey comic of Christmas songs. It is the Wednesday Addams of Christmas songs. It is the Edgar Allen Poe of Christmas songs, and I LIKE all of those people/characters and I do not like this. 

There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing

Is the bitter sting of tears

And the Christmas bells that ring
They are the clanging chimes of doom

Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you

I mean... I... We're thanking GOD right now that the "clanging chimes of doom" are for somebody else?

All right, that's all for my Very Scroogy Sing-a-long! 

Be well, friends.