Christmas Songs

  "The Twelve Days of Christmas" - Nobody celebrates all twelve days, and nobody wants to get a shitload of birds and people as gifts.  Also, too repetitive, and too many lazy parodies.

"Dominick the Donkey," "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" - These are silly children's songs, and have no business being on the radio mixed in with all the "regular" music, even if it's a rock cover.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" - I get that it was a different time and all, because women were expected to play hard-to-get, but the concept is dated and problematic by today's standards.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" - How does shining a bright light allow anyone to see through fog?  Doesn't fog reflect light?  I can suspend my disbelief as far as flying reindeer, because magic and all, but the light is explained as just ordinary red light.  It makes no sense.

"All I Want for Christmas is You," "Last Christmas," "Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You," and many others - Stop confusing Christmas with Valentine's Day.  I know love songs sell, and Christmas songs sell, but do we really have to combine them?

"Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" - Has anyone actually done this?  It's like riding is a sleigh or eating figgy pudding and sugar plums.  We keep singing about it like it's an activity we all do, but I don't know one person who does this.

"Jingle Bells," "Carol of the Bells," "Silver Bells" - Why are there so many songs about bells?  Anyone remember the Sweeny Sisters SNL sketch?

"All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" - This is just a stupid song, and the whistling is annoying.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" - I can understand telling your children not to shout, but does Santa also punish children for crying?  What if I'm crying because someone is shouting at me?

"Winter Wonderland," "Let it Snow," "It's a Marshmallow World" - Snow is a pain in the ass, especially for those of us who have to drive in it.  All we do is complain about it.  So why do we sing songs where we pretend to love it?  What about "Little Jack Frost Get Lost?"  That's a good song, but it gets very little airplay.

"Away in a Manger," "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," "We Three Kings," and many others - I appreciate and respect that the birth of Jesus is important to religious people, but why do secular radio stations keep adding them into the mix?

"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" - We're roasting marshmallows and telling scary ghost stories and tales of glory?  Is this Christmas or a camping trip?  The only ghost story I know for Christmas is Scrooge, and I don't think one is enough to justify that lyric.

"Hanukkah O Hanukkah," "The Hanukkah Song," "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel" - The Jewish calendar doesn't always synch up with the Gregorian calendar.  If Christmas falls on Hanukkah, fine, add these songs to the list.  If not, play them earlier.  Hanukkah isn't "Jewish Christmas."

"We Wish you a Merry Christmas," "Here We Come A-Wassailing" - These are songs about obnoxious drunks bothering people for free booze in public places.  Basically, it's SantaCon.  Don't sing songs glamorizing wassailing while simultaneously condemning public drunkenness.  It's hypocritical.

"Christmas Shoes" - The only reason most people even know this song is because of all the backlash it got.  That being said, all the criticisms are valid.  Patton Oswalt can explain better than I can.

"The Holly and the Ivy" - One of the oldest known Christmas songs and it hasn't aged well.  Half the words don't even rhyme in modern English, and the forced-connection between holly berries and the birth of Jesus just feels like a stretch.

"Good King Wenceslaus," "I Saw Three Ships" - Nobody knows all the words to these songs, but they show up in movies a lot, usually to signify Victorian times or that this is an old-timey sort of Christmas event.  The music to these are actually sort of nice, but like I said, nobody can remember the words.

"O Tannenbaum"/"Oh Christmas Tree" - The problem with this song is that it's translated from German, and depending on who did the translating, you might not be singing the exact same English version as the person next to you.

"The Little Drummer Boy" - Who read the Bible and decided it didn't have enough characters already?  Also, it's already kind of weird that a baby is being given gold, frankincense and myrrh, (I know, it's symbolic), but does the baby also want a drum solo?

"The Peanuts Theme Song" - This is not a Christmas song.  Just because Peanuts had a few Christmas specials doesn't make the main theme a Christmas song, and yet, it keeps getting thrown in the mix with all the actual Christmas music.

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Jingle Bell Rock" - Even by the 1950s standards, these songs barely rock.  Elvis Presley and Bill Haley rocked harder than this and their music was already softened for white audiences.  By the mid-60s, this type of "rock" was already a relic.

"White Christmas" - The number one selling song of all time!  That's impressive!  Too bad all it does is put me to sleep.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" - Unfortunately, this starts around Thanksgiving.

"I'll be Home for Christmas," "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" - I can see the appeal for people who are far from home and miss their families (especially the line "if only in my dreams"), but for a lot of people, the travelling and scheduling are a hassle.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" - This is a good idea.  Too bad modern commercialism has to make every Christmas bigger, longer, brighter, louder and more expensive than every previous year.

"Santa Baby" - I'm really not sure what this song is even going for.  Is it a commentary on consumerism?  Is it a tribute to high society?  Is it just a song for the sake of being a song?  I don't know.

"We Need a Little Christmas" - The idea that Christmas cheers people up when they're feeling depressed doesn't really hold up when you realize just how many people get depressed because of Christmas.

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" - Thanks for making me feel like an asshole.

"Some of My Favorite Things" - This another song that has no business being on a Christmas song list, but for some reason, it gets mixed in very often.

"Mele Kalikimaka" - This is not an actual Hawaiian phrase.  It's just the words "Merry Christmas" with letters swapped out from the Hawaiian alphabet.

"Evergreen Solstice," "Hail Holly King," "Yule is Come" - I love the idea of getting the winter holiday back to its Pagan roots, but these types of songs get very little airplay, if any.

"The Night Santa Went Crazy," "Wreck the Malls," "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and many others - I love the sarcastic, subversive, rude, or just plain silly songs, but they can be a bit overplayed, probably as a response to all the "traditional" overplayed songs.

The entire musical score from "The Nutcracker" - Has anyone actually sat down and watched this whole play?  Does anyone know what it's even about?  Yet every song from this show has to work its way into every Christmas movie trailer to let you know "This is a Christmas movie."

Christmas song medleys - Stop doing that.  Pick a song.  Chances are, whatever bits of songs you just used are going to show up later on in the same playlist anyway.

"Deck the Halls" - Actually, this one is fine.  I can't find any flaw with this one.