Vote for Your Favorite Christmas CarolsThis time of year we are inundated with Christmas Carols. There seems to be no good explanation for it other than we demand them. There are more songs to and about Christmas than all other holidays combined and pop musicians can’t stop themselves from adding to the ever-growing mountain of Christmas songs and albums every year. As I was driving home from Chesapeake country, I could find no shortage of radio stations that played nothing but Christmas songs all the way through Christmas day. Some of the lyrics of these familiar tunes are uplifting and make us want to sing along with them (“caroling,” as it were), but many are just drivel. Can you explain why we are obsessed with these songs? While you’re at it, here’s your chance to vote for the worst or best of the bunch, or just recognize some for special distinction. Here’s a few to help get you started:
Most un-Christmas-like Carol: I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. It starts off with “I want …” and spends the rest of the song talking about an African river mammal. If may be cutesy, but what’s that got to do with Christmas?
Better Message: Do They Know Its Christmas? The refrain is “Feed the World.”
Most Unlikely Lyrics: Do you hear what I Hear? Take this stanza:
Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
"Do you know what I know?In your palace warm, mighty king,Do you know what I know?A Child, a Child shivers in the cold--Let us bring him silver and gold,Let us bring him silver and gold."
Who’s silver and gold is the shepherd boy talking about (hint: not his)? While we’re at it, how about these from the 2nd verse of Hark the Herald:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;Hail the incarnate Deity,Pleased as man with man to dwell;Jesus, our Emmanuel!
I would have never written that.
Most Adult: Santa, Baby
Most Entertaining (in a 60s or 70s kind of way): Santa Claus and His Old Lady. It reprises a couple of stock characters from that era, that were intended to make you feel good about yourself (“at least I’m not that clueless”).
Sentimental Favorite: Let it Snow. Ok, this isn’t strictly a Christmas carol, but we used to have this roll on our player piano, and played it over and over (and over), past the rips, and the tape over the rips in the roll. Incidentally, it seemed to have snowed more then.
5 comments:
I got a text from Adam on Friday saying "I'm at lunch and still can't escape Johnny Mathis!" haha - my poor boys had to grow up listening to my favorite Christmas artist!
:P
'carol of the bells' - also the song
by paul mccartney, 'wonderful christmastime'
I actually really like the Johnny Mathis Christmas album. I think that, next to the Muppet Christmas record we used to wear out every year, it's the best collection of carols. My favorite song outside of those has always been "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (although it turns out that song is from a really sad part of the movie, "Meet Me In St. Louis," which makes it a little less Yuletidy. Factoid of the Day: Judy Garland made them change the lyrics from the gloomier "Have yourself a merry little Christmas/It may be your last . . .")
I can't help noticing that my favorites so far are Johnny Mathis, Judy Garland, and John Denver accompanying a bunch of socks. I was going to balance it out with Raffi's "Must Be Santa" and the Glenn Miller Orchestra's Christmas albums, but I'm not sure those do me any favors. So I'll throw in "I Want a Mistress for Christmas," by AC/DC. It's one of the few songs by a popular artist that doesn't sound like it was recorded for the purpose of getting on the radio during Christmas carol season. And it's pretty funny.
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