MY GRADE: 
Like all lapsed Jews I love a good Christmas song. But occasionally a lyric or two grabs my attention in the wrong way:
- Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: Here’s a great lesson for kids: If you’re different and mocked and humiliated by your peers — the only way to prove your own self-worth is to risk your life by braving a deadly winter storm.
- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: I must confess — until I was in my mid-30s the subtext of this song totally eluded me. I wondered why such a creepy Christmas tune about witnessing your mother having an affair with a beloved holiday character would be so popular. Then it struck me — ohhhh, it’s not really Santa. It’s his dad! Phew. That makes sense. Or does it? I still think the song gets a 10 on the creepy scale. After all, the kid seems to get some kind of perverse thrill from watching his mom fool around with other men: “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus/ Underneath the mistletoe last night/ She didn’t see me creep/ down the stairs to have a peep”…. Um…. ewwwww. Apparently, the kid is okay with this and thinks even dad might be cool with it too: “Oh what a laugh it would have been/ If Daddy had only seen/ Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.” So there you have it — our first Christmas song about a family of swingers.
- Twelve Days of Christmas: The song’s protagonist spends half of the twelve days unloading birds on his/her true love: doves, partridges, hens, geese, swans. Which gives me a good idea of how the “true love” must spend most of January — sick with Avian flu. (I won’t even broach the subject of the “maids a-milking” — it was a different era, I guess.)
- Winter Wonderland: This song is pretty straightforward until we hit the kooky bridge: “In the meadow we can build a snowman/then pretend that he is Parson Brown/ He’ll say ‘Are You Married?’/We’ll say ‘No man, but you can do the job when you’re in town!“ From what I’ve gathered a “parson” is a minister. So these kids make a snowman and pretend it’s a minister. And for some crazy reason (perhaps due to severe frostbite) the minister asks these bunch of little kids if they’re married. They say “no” but hey, if you’re in the neighborhood I’ll see if I can find someone to hook up and we’ll get married. Not too weird, huh? At this point in the song, all hell breaks loose: “We’ll have lots of fun with mister snowman/until the alligators knock him down.” I see — deadly warm weather creatures are traipsing through the winter snow, knocking down snowmen. And children (who may or may not be married at this point) are playing unsupervised in an area where it’s known that cold-weather alligators roam free. (*for more on this “alligator” controversy, click here)
- All I Want For Christmas: I’m rather fond of this one — the world’s horniest Christmas song. The lady needs her man for Christmas and nothing else is going to get the job done: “Santa Claus won’t make me happy/ with a toy on Christmas day.“ Hmmm, sounds like Santa needs to bring her a different kind of toy…
- Jingle Bells: This one seems harmless enough — until you dig deep into the often overlooked verses and realize the extent of carnage: “The horse was lean and lank/Misfortune seemed his lot/ He got into a drifted bank/ And we got upsot.” But that’s not all. One verse later things get even uglier: “A day or two ago/the story I must tell/I went out on the snow/And on my back I fell/A gent was riding by/In one-horse open sleigh/He laughed as there/ I sprawling lie/But quickly drove away...” So what we have here isn’t a Christmas carol so much as a public service announcement: riding in a one horse open sleigh is a deadly gamble. And how about the nice gent who laughs when he sees our narrator sprawled out on the ground after a potentially-crippling sleigh accident? Nice Christmas spirit, jackass!
I’ll leave you with this little ditty: a perfectly lovely Christmas song — until Bob Dylan got a hold of it. Merry Incoherent Christmas!
I always thought Bob Dylan sounded like Buckwheat singing.
But I have to add “Do You Hear What I Hear” to your list. As the song says “A child, a child shivers in the cold; let us bring him silver and gold. Let us bring him silver and gold.” Wise men my ass! The Three Wise Women would have brought a nice blankie and some booties!
Good point. I guess the child could pawn the silver and gold and get himself some warm socks, but he might be frostbitten by then.
Hilarious, I have somehow missed the “alligator” controversy before, LOVE IT!!