The 5 Worst Christmas Songs If You Really Think About Them.

Its Christmas time again, and everywhere you go you hear that music. If you have ever worked retail you start dreading it about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. Christmas music is catchy, everyone knows it and its only once in a great while that a new one captures everyone and gets added to the rotation. I think Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is you" has only just recently been truly accepted as a traditional Christmas songs.

However, most retailers now have forsaken most of the "Christian" Christmas songs, because they don't want to offend anyone. I mean what's wrong with the Christmas story? Its got everything, teenage childbirth, infanticide, tax season, censuses!! Yay! Christmas!

Now to be honest, if you REALLY wanted to make the "Holiday Season" more all inclusive, you would play Kwanzaa and Hanukkah songs, but for one, I don't know of any Kwanzaa songs, and how many times can you really listen to "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel?" And unfortunately Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song has not quite reached rotation at Macy's.

Which leaves us with the same standard "Winter Solstice Christmas Songs" Which, to be honest, there really aren't that many of. And with constant rotation, you really get to hear what these songs are about and you find out they are probably more offensive than mentioning the word "Jesus" or "Christ".

There are 5 songs that I've heard recently that I listen to and think...what the hell are they thinking here?


5. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
 
 Now I know that the indication here is that yes, Daddy is dressed up as Santa, its cute and kids are stupid. However, then you hear the Jackson 5 version.

Now, if you've listened to Michael's interviews, or watched "The Jackson's: An American Dream." You know that Joe Jackson was a very hard nosed father, who, allegedly abused his kids to get them to sing better. With this knowledge, and considering this is supposed to be from the child's point of view,  I am not quite sure of "What a laugh it would have been if daddy had only seen."

4. The 12 Days of Christmas

First of all, I don't think anyone has sang this song casually and ever gotten past the 7th day without someone either slapping them, or  them just getting bored with it. Second of all, if your "true love" is giving you all of this, I think they are trying to buy your love. I mean considering they are giving you 35 rings over the course of a week is a bit much. You also have consider the enslavement issues with the dancers, milkers, lords, and whatever other people are in the song, and how that would be looked at by some special interest groups.

Really, the worst part though is the clean up. By my count there are 187 birds you have to clean up after, plus the 40 cows that are being milked,  and the inevitable damage that all the leapers and dancers, are going to cause. It really isn't worth it in the end.

3. Santa Claus is Coming to Town

When I was a child I was terrified of Santa Claus. I would tell my mother "Don't let him come get me!" It might have been because I was a short kid and I thought that I would get kidnapped and made into an elf. If you pay attention to the lyrics of this monstrosity of a song, it doesn't really help calm any fears. It doesn't say what's going to happen if you're good, just "You better be good because Santa is coming, and he knows when you are sleeping, and what you've been doing. Its a cliche, but the song makes Santa come off as a horror villain and I really don't know what people are thinking when they have kids sing this during Christmas pageants, its a horrible song...unless Bruce Springsteen is singing it. Then it's awesome!

Of course this is about the scary versions of the song so...here's the scariest.

 

2.  Winter Wonderland
 

The song as a whole is fine, but there is one verse that really REALLY bothers me:

 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 

Um, excuse me? Why are we pretending a snow man is a preacher and why is he asking if children are married? Further more, the kids are okay with this, and invite him to come back and do the job. REALLY?

1. Santa Baby

 First of all, let me say that Eartha Kitt does this song better than ANYONE else, and in 1966, when she recorded this she was pretty damn hot. However, that context is gone now, and you basically get a dirty, greedy slut who is bribing and seducing Santa Claus to get what she wants. The fact is she is really a horrible human being in this song.

All Kidding aside, any of these songs are better than ANYTHING off the N'Sync or Bieber Christmas albums, which are pretty much put out to get an extra buck out of a star while they are still hot. Remember that Christmas is not about giving, or getting, it is about love, it is about hope and it is really the best time of the year whether you believe or not. You just need to find the focus of what you really want this season to be about.

Disney is crack!

So now that I have your attention for my first blog I figured I should explain myself. In July of 2010 my wife and I spent the day with her parents at Disney World.

As you can see, fun was had by all. The problem is that the 6 hours that we spent there was not enough for my wife and I we found ourselves wanting to see more than just the Magic Kingdom. We figured we should start planning and maybe we would be able to go in January. We threw it to the back of our minds and moved on with life.

But then came that damn enabler youtube. I started watching videos of rides, then shows, then started looking at websites dedicated to the Disney experience. I am not kidding you that by October, I had not only picked out the restaurants that we were going to go to, but I had personally picked out what I was going to be eating. I don't know if you've ever picked out a dinner three months in advance but its a little crazy.

Finally, this past January we took our first week long trip to Disney World. Everyone will tell you about the magic of Disney, and in future blogs I might talk about specific events that happened on this vacation, but needless to say, it was the most fun that I think I have had on any vacation in my life.

For Mindy it was a chance to see everything she had only heard about, and for me it was a chance to revisit a place that I had been several times over with my family, but never with as much freedom, never with this much knowledge and passion, and never for more than a few days. I returned home but still had that obsession in my head for a few months. We had to hide the Unofficial Guide, and the Complete Guide from me just to calm me down.

However in August we found one of the books again. Then the other showed up, the youtube videos started coming up whenever you would type the letter "d" into Firefox.  So of course, we are going back in January again. Yes we already have our trip planned, yes we already have our dinners booked, and while I don't have my specific meals picked out yet, I have them rounded down to a few choices. What can I say? I love Disney, and I am excited to go back. Besides, I can't find a good recipe for the Carrot Cake Cookie so where else am I going to get it?