Saturday, December 20, 2008

Christmas Songs I Hate, Part II

If part of you dies a little bit inside whenever you hear certain Christmas songs, this post is for you!
  • Most animal songs that involve Christmas - This includes any song done by the barking dogs. However, two that I find particularly horrific are "Dominick the Donkey" and "Chrissy the Christmas Mouse." Sweet baby Jesus, where to begin with how terrible these songs are. "Dominick the Donkey" actually includes braying. "Chrissy the Christmas Mouse," performed by Donald O'Conner and Debbie Reynolds (both of whom should have known better), is probably the most insipid songs ever created.
  • "A Howdy Doody Christmas" - I first heard this song when I worked at Pier 1, where it was on the Christmas music tape. After my coworkers and I stopped hyperventilating from the horror of it, it became one of the songs that we loved to hate. It was too bizarre to completely dismiss it, and so we resorted to mocking it every time it came on. Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube (I know that you are very sad about missing out). To give you an idea of what the song is like, just imagine a frightfully cheery Christmas song that would fit in a murder scene (probably directed by Quentin Tarantino) where someone gets stabbed or hacked to death.
  • "Warm and Fuzzy Time of Year" - Just the name makes me want to find and maim Billy Gillman. The only thing that could make this song less tolerable is when it features a creepy Howdy Doody puppet.
  • "Merry Christmas with Love" - This song has so much going against it. It is extremely sappy, it is kind of depressing, and it is performed by Clay Aiken, who has a rich, inoffensively bland voice. Whenever I hear this, I can't help but think that the carolers are really the woman's friends who are doing an intervention (through song).
  • "Same Old Lang Syne" - This shouldn't even count as a Christmas song, but radio stations tend to use it during the holiday season. While the song's plot takes place on Christmas Eve, I don't think that the holiday really matters. It could have taken place on July 4th or Flag Day or Arbor Day for all of the presence that the holiday has in the song. Anyway the narrator meets an ex-girlfriend at a grocery store and they drink beer in her car. Then a random Kenny G-esq solo ends the song. That's the basic plot. Tom Reynolds's I Hate Myself and Want to Die has a wonderful dissection of the song, and he makes a very valid point when he notes that "No matter how plaintively Fogelberg sings... it doesn't change the cold fact that nothing happens in this song."
  • "My Favorite Things" - I don't hate this song per se, but it really has no business being part of the Christmas/ holiday music rotation. Yes, it mentions a few wintry sort of things (snowflakes, silver white winters, etc.), but that is not a very sound rationale for considering this a Christmas song. It was in my family's Reader's Digest songbook, and even as a small child I found its inclusion suspect.

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