(Where do you go to return twelve pear trees?)
I don’t know about you, but I’d pay real money to just skip the whole week after Christmas. There are several reasons why:
- Your waistline’s fatter, but your wallet’s thinner
- You have to go to work, but everybody else is on vacation, so it’s impossible to get an approval, a signature, or sexually harassed
- Everybody at every store is returning stuff, including gifts, but also things like live animals, dead laptops, unwrapped undergarments, and suspect cheese
- You’re stuck with sports options like the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, and the PETA Simpering Confiscatory Fund To Help Relocate The Transgendered Spackle-Necked Ozark Boll Weevil Bowl
- You still have seventeen rolls of cartoon-reindeer-coated gift-wrapping paper that can’t possibly be used for mid-calendar occasions like birthdays, weddings, and early parole celebrations
Plus, thanks to a Christmas-carol-induced purchasing frenzy, committed by My True Love (I call her “True”), I’m now several layers deep in redundant gifts … 364 of ‘em, if you add up all twelve days’ worth.
The unmentioned problem with the whole ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ gift strategy is its multiplier effect. I mean, thanks very much, True, but … twenty-two turtle doves? Seriously?
Maybe, I could find a use for one golden ring. Maybe. Ever unwrapped five of them? And then five more, and then five more? Eight times? While you’re trying not to trip over maids, lords, pipers, drummers, geese, hens, swans, doves, calling birds and cranky PETA protestors?
And if you’ve ever had thirty heavily-caffeinated lords leaping in the same room with forty-two egg-laying geese, you know things aren’t going to end well. That’s just goose doom waiting to happen. That’s just pending pâté.
Another problem with the week after Christmas is a sneaky post-Christmas music conspiracy. Here’s how it works: During the holiday season, we’re persistently bathed in happy, inspiring Christmas music, and it’s wonderful. But then, once Christmas is over, the music gatekeepers box up the good stuff until next year.
And then they pull out the B team. Really marginal stuff. The fringe fa-la-la. Dick Haymes. Patti Page. Tex Ritter (I’m not kidding). Various amalgams called The So-And-So Brothers or The Whatsit Sisters, babbling about bells, fat men, fat men with coal, Mommy kissing fat men, and Frosty the Scary Reanimated Popsicle Person. Paul Anka from his “pre-acne” period (apparently Paul Anka has never been spotted not singing, and has at least two albums recorded in utero). The Ray Conniff Singers, who deserve to be publicly caned simply for horribly arranged syncopation. Roger Whittaker singing Boston Marathon versions of ‘The Twelve Days,‘ which may constitute criminal negligence and be legally actionable.
It’s as if we’d all spent the last few months in a warm, cozy bar relishing the house band, led by Mozart himself, and suddenly we’re stuck with a bad eight-track tape titled “Salieri Is Rocking This Crimmuh, Yo.”
Case in point: not long ago, because I wasn’t fast enough to turn off the radio, I heard somebody named Buddy Clark singing something called ‘The Merry Christmas Waltz.’
I’m still getting over it.
‘The Merry Christmas Waltz‘ is, without challenge, the WASP-est holiday offering ever over-wrought. Compared to this arrangement, Lawrence Welk was the thug gangsta love child of Jimi Hendrix and Sergio Mendes.
“Wunnerful, wunnerful! Give it up one moe ‘gin for Paul Anka’s fetus and the June Taylor Dancers!”
Besides, there’s something sinister about 3/4 time. It’s just so … feudal.
I understand what the gatekeepers are trying to do – they’re trying to make us so sick of carols that we won’t miss them when they go away until next winter. I understand. They’re weaning us. They’re trying to do us a favor.
Stop trying to do us a favor.
Conspiracies aside, though, America’s Christmas music repertoire in general is out of control. Over time the genre has crab-walked into topics that are, at best, a bit of a stretch and, at worst, downright bizarre. Let’s review some selected lyrics, shall we?
“Hang your nose down, Rudy. Hang your nose and cry.”
What the heck is that?
“Here comes the fattest man in town.”
C’mon, people. It’s Christmas. Leave Newt alone.
“He’s a rootin’ tootin’ Santa Claus. Yippee ki-yo ki-yay!”
This marketing tie-in defies analysis, and the absurdity speaks for itself. Besides, I don’t want to know anyone who is rootin’, much less tootin’.
And just for the record – if anybody ever walks up to me and says “yippee ki-yo ki-yay,” I’ll stab ‘em with a pointy stick. If they’re wearing a red wool suit, I’ll stab twice.
“To see a great big man entirely made of snow,” she sings.
This is an obvious, desperate plea for therapy. When the snow melts, somebody riffle the Yellow Pages for “intervention.”
“Down in Mexico, we have got no snow. Every time we sing, tequila glasses ring.”
Let’s hope they don’t sing much, else it’s gonna be an early night. Have an undocumented Christmas!
“If you want bananas, great big bananas, shake hands with Santa Claus.”
How does that transaction work, exactly? What, is St. Nick now moonlighting as some kind of Chiquita Pez dispenser? It sounds more like some sick Vegas come-on, or street code for a drug drop.
“Tumpety tum tum.”
“Ba rum pa tum tum.”
“Jing jing-a-ling ling-a-ling ling-a-ling-ling. Ha ha. Ho ho.”
What more is there to say, your honor? Psychiatric evaluation completed. Case closed. Bring on the big-arm tuxedo.
Then there are songs that snuck in, like emaciated blonde celebrity addicts at a White House dinner, and now they won’t go away. In our opinion, ‘My Favorite Things‘ is not a legitimate Christmas carol; however, it is a nice “hint hint, honey!” paean to obsessive shopping. And given everything American advertising has done to prostitute Christmas, the jury’s still out on this one.
Nor is ‘Toyland‘ a valid tune for tinsel-time. “Once you cross its border, you can never return again” does not invoke Christmas. This is more a tune for Halloween, maybe, or a cautionary tale about backpacking in Iran’s back yard. It speaks of making a bad decision with no mulligans, like subscribing to that relentless, time-defying Time-Life Book-of-the-Month club, or eating too much Mexican food.
And speaking of Halloween, what’s the back story on this campfire lyric, from ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year‘ – “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”
What glories, exactly? Dude, we’re talking about a federal holiday, not the fields of Verdun or the ’36 Olympics! Did I miss something on the news wire? Did Santa paratroop into Tehran and spirit away the busted backpackers?
But even those tunes, bad as they are, are mere infractions. As Gandalf might put it, there are fouler things in the deep places than Orcs. Musical travesties exist that must be stopped, with due prejudicial intensity and by all available means, military, judicial and otherwise. So, in the interest of promoting a sane, civil society, I propose a new set of Yuletide Music Management laws.
- In the song ‘Jingle Bells,’ after the line “…O’er the hills we go, laughing all the way,” it shall be illegal for a recording studio to insert actual laughter. This prohibition shall include (but not be limited to) the ha-ha-ha’s of children, dogs, and strolling hordes of Lawrence Welk-type Judeo-Christian couples.
- No entity shall be allowed to add lyrics to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker Suite.’
- It doesn’t make any sense for all-growed-up adults to be singing ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,’ unless said adult is hopelessly accident-prone, or Leon Spinks. So cease and desist. Find a kid or sit down. Estop it.
- During any given Christmas tune, you may only transpose up to the next key once. Actually, the court would prefer that you not transpose at all or, if possible, less.
- It shall be illegal for anyone, anywhere, at any time, to sing ‘Dominick, the Christmas Donkey.’ Not even as a joke. This proscription really should’ve been part of the original U.S. Constitution.
- The Rule of Thirds: If a carol is written in a perfectly nice minor key and then suddenly, at the very end of the song, you decide to resolve it in a major key, the court will find you and visit upon you a severe form of vigilante justice. (see “pointy stick”)
- No one shall be allowed to modify, in any way, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ This carol is much like the Constitution – it may have its flaws, but futzing around with it is only gonna make things worse.
In closing, I’ll confess something to you. As much as I love the holiday season, there’s one American-holiday-oriented thing I’m always glad to know will be going away – wherever it is these things go away to – until next Christmas. And what is that thing, you ask?
Burl Ives.
It’s nothing personal, actually, even though there’s something about Burl’s cover of ‘Frosty the Snowman‘ that makes True and me want to invest in an ice axe. No, my main concern is this: I just want to make darn sure the gatekeepers have big Burl available, until next holiday season, to sit on the box where they keep Andy Williams.
You know what I’m saying? I mean, the average American’s work-a-day year is hard enough already.
The last thing we need in mid-calendar is Andy Williams jumping up and grinning those teeth at us.
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