A Journey Through Holiday Hell

An Evening with “Jolly Christmas” feat. Satan

When I first settled in behind the wheel, I was in good spirits.  Thanksgiving was behind us, well-earned, there was a winter chill in the air, and I had a long drive ahead.  Best of all it was just me and my dog, so I could listen to whatever I wanted on the radio.  My dog is good that way.  

Filled with possibilities, I spun the radio dial and the first song that played was Holly Jolly Christmas, the original Burl Ives version, and it hit a nerve.  It is impossible to listen to that song without thinking fondly of the claymation elves putting up the Christmas tree in the Rudolph movie, and I knew immediately that this station was going to be the staple music for the ride: SiriusXM Channel 105: Jolly Christmas, promising “Upbeat Feel-Good Holiday Hits.”  Jolly.  That was my mood, and I didn’t have to apologize to anyone.  Strap in.        

When the next song was something called Small Town Christmas by someone named Rob Thomas, I suspected that I was a victim of the Ol’ Bait and Switch.  But I didn’t lose faith.  I rode it out, literally.  Now, after hours behind the wheel, I am confident that “Jolly Christmas” surely holds the title of Satan’s Number One Radio Station.     

For example, did you know that Hall and Oates recorded a cover version of Jingle Bell Rock? Did you also know that in 1932 Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deliberately starved almost four million citizens to death, many of whom resorted to cannibalism before meeting their grisly demise?

When I was in high school, I had a piano sheet music book of Christmas songs. I still have it.  It’s called the Ultimate Series, and has what it would claim were the 100 favorite Christmas songs – the Canon, if you will.  I would play songs from it every year on Christmas, often to singing drunk relatives.  Today when I play it, the piano player is usually drunk as well.  As you might expect, it has all the familiar holiday songs: the religious ones (O Holy Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World), the Johnny Marks-Burl Ives Classics (Rudolph, Holly Jolly Christmas), and the traditional ones (Let it Snow, Deck the Halls, I’ll Be Home for Christmas).

I also distinctly remember that the book had one modern pop-rock Christmas Song: Do They Know It’s Christmas? 

Do They Know It’s Christmas? (1984), co-written by Bob Geldof and performed by a group referring to itself as Band Aid, is a musical plea to rich Westerners to help the starving people of drought-ravaged East Africa, the precursor to the Live Aid concert, which took the world by storm the following summer. Despite its bleak background, it’s a decent song (Geldof co-wrote I Don’t Like Mondays, after all), and featured among others Sting, George Michael, Duran Duran, and is punctuated by a pre-Joshua-Tree Bono belting out the classic line “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.”

That line packs a punch, but I always secretly enjoyed the borderline-ridiculous lyrics immediately preceding Bono’s solo: 

But say a prayer, to pray for the other ones
At Christmastime, it’s hard, but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the Clanging Chimes of doom

Clanging Chimes of Doom indeed.  

The grim lesson from my car ride was that almost every pop artist over the past thirty years has been apparently trying to work its way into the next 100-Song Christmas Canon. With sickening, soul-deadening results.  Do They Know It’s Christmas? may not be a durable classic, and probably shouldn’t even be considered a Christmas song, but at least it has a point. 

It didn’t take more than a few songs before the pattern started to emerge, a formula repurposed again and again by what can only be regarded as a sort of pre-AI demonic algorithm.  Start with a mediocre hook and chorus, generally found in the lesser tracks of any of these artists (they can’t all be hits), sing about the most generic, uninteresting, holiday-themed thing possible, usually some variation of “Christmas is Here,” or “It’s Christmas Season Again,” mention Santa and/or mistletoe and/or snow, double the tempo, add sleigh bells for taste, and voila, you have a candidate for the next Ultimate Series Top 100 Christmas Songs. 

These are the songs to accompany a Yule Log, if that log was throwing off embers that set fire to the curtains, the living room, the house, and all its occupants.  And the entire neighborhood.  And the city.  And the whole world.    

Did you know that three Train songs played during my drive? Three different Train songs.  I don’t mean songs about trains, like something from the Polar Express, or toy trains, like what one might find under the Christmas tree. I mean original Christmas songs written and recorded by the "band", "Train".  Did you also know that Genghis Khan, as a form of torture and execution, used to pour molten silver into the eyes and ears of his enemies?

Here are some of the other Upbeat Feel-Good Holiday Hits that hit a nerve:

Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe, featuring the poignant words “With you, shorty, with you; With you, shorty, with you; With you, under the mistletoe.” 

Christina Aguilera.  Hear for yourself what happens when you take The Christmas Song and throw it into a blender.

N’Sync’s Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.  I swear to God, that’s the name of the song.  (Also, sorry, Justin Timberlake, but the Backstreet Boys Christmas song was infinitely less shitty.  What’s that one called?  Oh yeah, It’s Christmas Time Again.)

A Christmas to Remember, by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It might have been a memorable holiday, but it is surely a Song to Haunt Your Dreams. 

Warning: if you listen to Jolly Christmas, you’d better like Rod Stewart. He makes a number of appearances across various genres, including a cover of Baby, it’s Cold Outside, also with Dolly Parton. (They also played the Dean Martin version, which is for some reason controversial, even though it’s just a sweet song about a penis that is concerned that a vagina might crash the car in the snow on the way home.)  

Wait, you thought Bryan Adams wouldn’t be implicated in this project?  Who else could come up with this chorus?  

There's something about Christmas time
Something about Christmas time
That makes you wish it was Christmas everyday

Hanson: Finally, It’s Christmas.  Finally, I drove the car off the cliff.   

Did you know that Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton recorded a Christmas song together called You Make it Feel Like Christmas?  Did you also know that Vlad III of modern-day Romania, today known as Vlad the Impaler, once murdered thousands of townspeople by impaling them on a forest of spikes?   

Perhaps most perplexing to me is a song called It’s Christmas Time by someone named Samantha Cole, which might be the most pointless song ever conceived by humankind.  

I don’t know who this person is, I’m sure she’s lovely, but her song played at least once every hour.  This is the type of music you play loudly to break the will of the hostage-takers.  It surely did mine.     

“Must she keep playing that?!”

Eventually I stopped taking mental notes and just listened to the Master Lyric: “It’s Christmas Again. The tree is up. The party is starting. And you should kill yourself.”  

Below is a rough historical timeline immediately preceding my ride home:

1. Birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 

2. Crucifixion of Jesus

3. Adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire

4. Celebration of the birth of Christ as a religious holiday, today known as Christmas  

5. Music commemorating Christmas, such as Joy to the World (G.F. Handel), Handel’s Messiah, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing (F. Mendelssohn)  

6. Songs commemorating other traditions associated with the Christmas holiday, such as O Christmas Tree, Deck the Halls, and Jingle Bells 

7. Jingle Bell Rock 

8. Hall and Oates cover of Jingle Bell Rock 

9. Jonas Brothers Like It's Christmas

10. Western Civilization declared dead

The order of the last two might fairly be swapped.

After two hours of Jolly Christmas, realizing that our civilization had long-ago crossed the spiritual and cultural Rubicon, I pondered whether I would swerve into oncoming traffic or make it all the way home, eat my dinner first, and then heed the advice of the songs and hang myself with a belt in the shower.    

Then it happened.  The song I was perhaps subconsciously anticipating the whole time started to play. I knew there had to be more.  I knew that my patience would reward me with a song that felt like a Christmas song, even if just a little bit.  A song that provided something, anything.  A song that wasn’t total bullshit.    

So this is Christmas 
And what have you done? 
Another year over 
And a new one just begun 

In one line, it asks for reflection. I don’t care that I will now hear that song a thousand times over the next month.  It has a point. It has a reason to exist.  Yes, it took a Christmas song written and performed by one of the most outspoken atheists of all time, John Lennon, to renew my faith.

I exhaled and straightened the steering wheel.  I want to live again! 

And then the next song played, a little ditty called All I Want for Christmas Is You.  My mood went from rapture to rage.  It was then that it finally hit me.  I now realized that there was one person more than any other who was responsible for everything.  The she-demon who set this whole machine in motion.  Mariah Carey.  

It has it all.  The unreasonably fast beat, the mistletoe, the trappings of Christmas in full display without any substance or purpose, all in a song that, unlike virtually every other song heard that day, actually went on to become a commercial hit.  This was the song that everyone else aspired to copy.  It was the turd on top of the Xerox machine. 

The bells that open that song are the ones foretold in my youth.  Alas, those are not Christmas bells we hear.  Can you hear them? They are the Clanging Chimes of Doom!