When I was a kid taking piano lessons (There's another whole blog here. My parents had a piano when I was growing up and they thought it would be great discipline for me if I learned how to play the durn thing. Trouble was, I was 6 years old and didn't want to practice for an hour every day. I wanted to be with my friends at the playground across the street. It took my parents about a year to figure that out before they eventually said I could stop. Consequently, I can't even tell you where Middle C is these days. Even more consequentially, I really wish I could play the piano now).
Anyway, when I was a kid taking piano lessons, we had a songbook that had a section full of Christmas carols in it. They were the traditional tunes like "O Little Town of Bethlehem" or "The First Noel" or "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Even "Deck The Halls." My favorite was "O Come All Ye Faithful." You get the point.
I loved those songs. They were my introduction to the season and most of them ran parallel to my Moravian upbringing. I even memorized the lyrics and I would sing them for hours, entirely off key.
As I grew older, (and thanks to listening to the radio) more Christmas songs joined my mental catalog. Some of them were OK. Some were atrocious. Most of them couldn't keep up with my piano songbook.
Here, in no particular order, is my list of flawed-to-horrible Christmas songs that I would never play on the piano even if I knew how to play:
I don't think I've ever been more annoyed by a song than "The Chipmunk Song." I don't even know if that's the real title. It came out as a novelty song in 1957 – when I was 6 and learning piano – and I hated it. I hated it then and I hate it now.
Tied for first place in my world might be "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." What a stupid story. Santa always had eight reindeer. You could even look it up. Clement Moore's classic poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," lists the original eight flyers. Eight. No more, no less. Rudolf, the song written by Johnny Marks in 1949, was made famous by a cowboy, Gene Autry, to sell records. Rudolf was never a real reindeer like the others were/are.
Also tied for first as the worst in my world is "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Oh, please. You're gonna hit-and-run my drunk grandmother at Christmas time?
I don't want to hear "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms, especially after I've just come from a Moravian love feast of yeast rolls and coffee and where a pre-teenager wonderfully sang "Morning Star" to me.
In a similar vein is "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" by Brenda Lee. You should be rocking on New Year's Eve, not so much on Christmas.
"All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth." Yikes.
I liked Burl Ives. I don't like "A Holly Jolly Christmas."
"I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." I didn't used to mind this one so much until I read a review that I can no longer unsee, so I'm going to ruin it for you, too. On the surface it's a song about a child watching his mother being sexually assaulted by an elderly home invader until you realize that mom isn't really cheating on dad but that both adults have a Santa fetish.
I love The Beatles. None were ever better. But John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" makes you wonder how "In My Life" and "Yesterday" evolved from the same brains. Subpar Christmas tunes for both of them.
I never got into "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." It gave me too many rules to follow in a season meant for happiness, brotherhood, reflection and for being a kid.
There are, no doubt, hundreds of other no-worthy Christmas tunes out there, some of which I've never heard because they are recent and I don't listen to the radio as much as I used to. But they're out there.
Besides, it's probably too late for me to start learning the guitar.
Merry Christmas.
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