Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving—also known as Black Friday –is the day when Christmas songs overwhelm the airwaves and blast through the P.A. system in every store, reminding the beleaguered customers that they have only 00 days to finished their Christmas shopping, which more efficient people completed during last January’s White Sales.
This year, it seems that Halloween was the starting pistol for Christmas songs—most of which make me grit my teeth and lunge for the radio dial in the car or search earnestly for an exit if I’m in, say, a Walmart.
Any song featuring chestnuts roasting, chipmunks singing, snowmen melting, reindeer glowing, Mommy kissing Santa Claus or Bing Crosby wearing a Santa hat bring out this flight-or-fight reaction in me.
I just looked up on Google the “100 Greatest Christmas Songs of All Time” compiled by WCBS FM. The first eight, not surprisingly, all send my blood pressure soaring:
Here they are:
1. White Christmas
2. The Chipmunk Song
3. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
5. Jingle Bell Rock
6. The Christmas Song (“Chestnuts roasting….”
7. Snoopy’s Christmas (actually I’ve never heard this one—thankfully)
8. Here Comes Santa Claus
Number nine—Little Drummer Boy—I actually don’t mind. I think that’s because it’s reggae? My favorite commercial Christmas song is also reggae: “Mary’s Boy Child Jesus Christ.”
This brings me to an aside—Have you seen the You Tube video of the cranky little boy baby who is fussing as his dad straps him into a car seat but is immediately calmed into a grinning, grooving, happy child by the first notes of Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier?” If you haven't seen it, look it up—it’s strange but funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9SSL6IydpM
I’ve noticed that reggae music has the same effect on me—I can almost feel it lower my blood pressure. Maybe there’s some scientific basis to how the reggae beat calms one down. Maybe science should investigate.
While I really hate the commercial Christmas songs that seem to multiply ever year (how about “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” and “Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer”?), I really love the traditional religious Christmas carols and am happy that the Greek Orthodox church we attend (Saint Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester) features English-language carols at the holidays, especially in the Christmas Eve children’s pageant, which is a must-see in our family. (We’re always betting on whether or not some of the smallest children, dressed as sheep, will bolt from the manger, abandoning the shepherds and heading for home and Mommy.)
I’m sad that most schools are not allowed to use religious carols during holiday programs any more. Back in the day, when I was in school, we sang carols during our holiday program and even learned them in our foreign language classes. I can still sing “Angels We have Heard on High” in French and “Jingle Bells” in Latin. (“Tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus’) In fact ,our Latin teacher, the late, lamented Richard Scanlan, translated all sorts of things for us, creating games and projects that made his Latin classes the most popular at Edina Morningside High School.)
I wish there were some way we could bring religious Christmas Carols back into the schools—maybe by teaching the kids songs to celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanza in various languages at the same time? And I wish we could somehow outlaw commercial Christmas songs in the stores, especially those featuring chipmunks, reindeer and Bing Crosby, until Black Friday at the earliest.
Poll: What Christmas song do you hate the most? Which is your favorite?
