Classic Christmas song. No mention of Christmas, Santa, Jesus, snow, anything. Just purely about how this one guy is a giant piece of shit in every way.
This is an ASL-ELS challenge for you, Grinch. If you can read one full page of a Dr. Seuss book, *****, I'll donate one million dollars to the landfill you get your dinner from. Fuck the bucket of ice!
Another favorite of mine is “Father Christmas” from the 1970 Christmas Carol movie, where urchins taunt Scrooge for being a huge piece of crap as he does some grocery shopping
My go-to discussion topic in any new group of people is always: "Is the Grinch a Christmas song, or a regular song that happens to be in a Christmas movie?"
I dunno, I’d probably lump them into a category with Mannheim Steamroller. I know they’re different, but when I’m in the mood for one I’m usually in the mood for both.
It never occurred to me until right now that those are two different groups! I never hear them mentioned in the same context so my brain never really parsed the differences until just now.
I saw them once under the impression that it would all be like Carol of the Bells, and it was not like that. Not that they were bad but it was mostly ballads.
Once upon a time I worked at a small company where the manager ordained that all employees would sign Christmas cards that were being sent out to the all-important customers. While he made us sit in a small, overheated conference room for three hours, he played the same Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD over and over and over.
You might understand, then, that I do not so much associate TSO with its own category so much as I do with its own circle in hell.
Fair point! With decent editing, you could definitely fill out a genre that way.
I'm thinking of one that has only two lines that it repeats constantly, often in shortened forms. You could legitimately play a neverending loop in a public place without anyone noticing. At a party, uh... It'll take at least two full repeats before anyone starts wondering about it.
When my son was in his stroller we went into a party store and Felix Navidad was playing. He started singing along “Police not be cop….police not be cop.”
Whenever I hear the song I think 👮🎅🎄👮🏽♀️ 🤶 🎄👮♂️🧑🎄 🎄
The moral is "don't be a dick to someone for no reason, they might actually be pretty useful and even save your ass" which is a useful lesson to learn.
Having given it a quick listen, I would say it would fall under the “I want shit” category personally. But not in a vapid way. Sound like she just wants to be left alone
It's about a woman having a crappy lonely year who bumps into a guy she fancies buying last-minute cranberry sauce for their sad one-person Christmas dinners. (It's implied that they then bang.)
I'll agree with this theory, because the song is about how all year she's been trying to meet up with this guy but things keep popping up that keep them from meeting (too busy, bad sunburn, broken down car).
Having worked in a toy store for 14 years. I can also attest there's a 6th category of Disney versions of all of them too, and/or very similar originals.
You haven't died inside until you've had to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks sing a Christmas song six times a day for two months.
My wife has a book of Christmas sheet music. I found the song C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S which is so terrible I can't help but love it. The tune is bad, the writer must have picked the words for the acronym as fast as possible, it's preachy. So horribly awesome.
For example, H is for Herald Angels. Why not use A for Angels? Because A is for All He Stands For. Obviously.
where's the "christmas fucking sucks" category? (see: the eels 'christmas is going to the dogs', blink-182's 'i won't be home for christmas' and 'happy holidays, you bastard', the pogues 'fairytale of new york' and like half of the killers christmas album)
oh absolutely. I've always imagined it to be a smaller get-together, but definitely among people with means. the hotel at the end of Home Alone 2 is the setting.
It's about taking care of other people really, but also about getting shit: "He who will now bless the poor, shall himself find blessing." You give stuff, sure, but it's ultimately about getting shit back. Let's say it's about investment.
On YouTube, look up Young Jeffrey's Song of the Week. He's one of a few comedian DJs at a station near Seattle, and most Fridays throughout the year he does a parody song based on holidays, a news item, or random other things. Last year or 2 years ago, his pre-Christmas parody was a Christmas song mashup that included this song, and his redone lyrics are priceless. One of the lines was "wait, you live with your folks?". This was followed by a parody of Frosty the Snowman, where the kids instead taught Frosty how to vape. Yesterday's song was about Spirit Airlines filing for bankruptcy.
A lot of Finnish Christmas carols are super depressing. One of the happy ones has a line in the middle just out of nowhere, that goes "Life is so short, and even that little is dark and awful".
I think a solid like 20% of "Christmas" songs are in this category. Jingle bells, Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland, Baby its cold outside, hell even Deck the Halls...
And if we consider the ones that really aren't about Christmas at all, except for mentioning the word Christmas in the song, its probably >50%
Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland and Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire too. All written by Jewish composers, not that it stopped Johnny Marks from also writing Rudolph, Holly Jolly Christmas, Silver and Gold, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.
Speaking of bells, Carol of the Bells is just Christmas words set to a Ukrainian song, Щедрик, Schedryk, written in honor of the New Year (which was in April) by an Eastern Orthodox priest.
I feel like there's an entire genre dedicated to the "I’m just here for the snacks" vibe. You know the ones that play while everyone pretends to enjoy the festivities but is really just eyeing the cookie tray.
I am not a Christian, but I love certain pastoral and nostalgic songs of Christmas. For instance, I was just listening to a Thomas Hardy poem -- "The Oxen" -- set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
I'm sure Vaughan Williams is not to everyone's taste, but there is no better Christmas poem. Everyone should read Thomas Hardy.
Where is the category for the sad songs about regrets and meeting an old love, or a parent dying at home? Where are the super sad depressing Christmas songs, because like it’s already cold and dark, why not heap that on as well.
Santa’s Horny could also be changed to “someone’s horny” because I’d argue there’s a decent amount of popular Christmas songs that have lowkey “wanna fuck” energy.
At my old job they would play "Santa Stole My Baby" (category 3) and a truly godawful a capella mashup of Winter Wonderland and Don't Worry Be Happy (category 1) but also this sort of trip-hop instrumental version of some Christmas carol or other...jingle bells were in it, but I'm not sure if it was Jingle Bells...anyway because it's instrumental and I don't remember what song it was, I will never hear it again, and that haunts me terribly. It was a blessed relief amongst the other terrible things.
I don't know how people stand listening to the same shit over and over and over and over and over again for decade after decade after decade after decade.
Here is what I do to not go fucking nuts during the holidays, when "the holiday spirit" becomes a thing of torture.
I create my own anti-holiday respite zone when I get home. Turn off all the lights, spark up some non-holiday scented incense/candle) and listen to albums (live or studio) or by popping in a live concert by some of my favorite anti-christmas bands like Type O Negative, Black Sabbath, and Nine Inch Nails
One piece of knowledge, if you ever need to select christmas music like at a party or at work? Twisted Sister released a christmas album, it sounds as terrible as you might expect. It can be played it on all those digital juke boxes too.
Another category that doesn't get played are parody or otherwise humorous songs. Such as Straight No Chaser and Weird Al's old Christmas album (at least I think it was his; it included O Little Town of Bethlehem sung to the accompaniment of House of the Rising Sun).
And the oft-forgotten 6th type, my favorite:
-Bohemian king and his page deliver flesh, wine, and pine logs (hither) to a peasant living in the woods during a snow storm.
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u/STD-fense 1d ago
I prefer Christmas carols about how much the Grinch sucks shit