A Few Christmas Tunes I’d Like to Roast over an Open Fire

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this essay are mine alone. But it is my blog so I can do that. You may feel differently. I won’t hold it against you.

I’m fond of Christmas music and I’m sincerely grateful to those radio stations that play it all day, every day from Thanksgiving until Christmas. I can’t help singing along with all my favorites, which I’m sure is as entertaining to the people next to me at stoplights as it is annoying to those in the car with me. I’d never get my tree up and my Christmas shopping done if it weren’t for music getting me into the spirit of the season. And sometimes even that doesn’t work.

I love “O Holy Night,” “Away in a Manger” and “Silver Bells.” Every time a snowflake falls I burst into a chorus of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” even if it falls in April. I like “White Christmas” as much as anyone, as long as I don’t have to shovel. And “Winter Wonderland” is one of my favorites. You know it: “Later on we’ll perspire, ‘cause it’s warm by the fire. Plus we’re afraid of the plans that we’ve made, walking in a winter wonderland.” It’s something like that.

But there are a few Christmas songs that make me grateful Christmas comes but once a year, and “Santa Baby” is at the top of the list. “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (See how I did that? I really like that one.) The singer is flirting with Santa, who, as far as I know, is a happily married man. And all she wants for Christmas is…a lot. Just a fur coat, a convertible, a yacht, a duplex, some checks, a ring, decorations from Tiffany’s and the deed to a platinum mine. All I want is to never hear her ask for it all again.

The only wish list longer than hers is in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I read that it would cost $170,298.03 to buy everything for that twelve-day gift-giving rampage and what would you have to show for it? A noisy mess. Our hapless gift recipient would be forced to sell her gold rings to buy an aviary for all the birds. Then she’d have put the ladies dancing and the lords-a-leaping to work cleaning it, which would be a real waste of talent.

“All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” is a short but equally annoying Christmas wish song. There’s not a child in America who would settle for that. That song should only be performed at elementary school Christmas concerts where it’s still cute, even if it is a lie.

“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is another song that should only be sung by small children, and the Chipmunk song, “Christmas Don’t Be Late,” should only be heard by small children. That song makes me long for a little “Silent Night” which, by the way, is one of my favorites.

And speaking of musical animals, hearing dogs bark “Jingle Bells” is a once-in-a-lifetime experience by which I mean once in a lifetime is enough. I don’t know about chestnuts, but that’s one Christmas CD I wouldn’t mind roasting over an open fire.

That and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” It’s mean, it’s disrespectful and there’s no way it could have happened. Everyone knows reindeer fly.

Finally there’s “The Christmas Shoes,” a melodramatic song about a boy who goes shoe shopping for his mother while she’s home dying. Hear that too many times and you have a hard time believing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” (Another favorite of mine.)

I’ll get through it somehow. I’ll sing along with the ones I like and change the station during the ones I don’t. December 26 will roll around and I won’t have to hear “Last Christmas” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” again for another whole year. “Joy to the World,” which I love, by the way.

Excerpt from ’Tis the Season to Feel Inadequate, Holidays, Special Occasions and Other Times Our Celebrations Get Out of Hand now available at Mitzi’s Books in Rapid City and on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.