The 6 Types of Annoying Christmas Songs

Merry Whatsis Eve, everyone. I'm about to head out to some non-holiday-themed festivities, and then home to Orange County, so I won't be around for a day or so. You'll live. In my stead, please enjoy this new Christmas-y list, The 5 Types of Annoying Christmas Songs, my little way of saying "thank you" to all those Secular Progressives out there in the trenches, fighting the War on Christmas. And proud we are of all of them.

1. Outdated "Traditional" Christmas Carols

Sold old-school Christmas carols still work. I mean, we don't actually deck the halls with boughs of holly any more...Most people don't have long enough halls in their home to "deck" them with anything, except maybe dust mites. But you still get at least the gist of that song - people are happy, it's Christmas, let's decorate and eat wet, disgusting desserts with names like "Spotted Dick."

But "Good King Wenceles"? It has nothing to do with present-day Christmas. It's something about the Feast of Stephen, whatever the hell that means. And more than just being egregiously out of step, the songs just sound too severe to listen to them all the time. It's like hearing old church music all around town for one whole month out of the year.

Like that one (I don't know the name) where it's like, "Christmas is here/Songs of good cheer/From everywhere/Filling the air" and it's all clipped and serious and sung by a weird boy's choir...I'm trying to enjoy a Hot Dog on a Stick here, people! Your level of humorless piety is at a 12, I'm going to need you at a 3 or 4.

2. Christmas Carols That Make No Sense

In the meadow...we can build a snowman. And pretend that he is Parson Brown. He'll say (the snowman) "Are you married?" We'll say, "No, man...but you can do the job when you're in town."

What the fuck is wrong with Christian people?

And as if that wasn't bad enough, let me ask you this...Have you ever, in fact, had a holly jolly Christmas? Oh, I'm sure some of you have had a jolly Christmas. Probably not most of you, but some of you. But can you honestly say that celebration was holly? How is it even possible to have a holly Christmas, when holly is a noun?

3. Rock Stars Doing Renditions of Popular Christmas Songs

Hearing Bruce Springsteen whine about the plight of the average drunken New Jersey dumbass for hours on end is painful enough, but hearing him belt out "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" 100 times in one month is an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Seriously. If I were in prison being brutally anally raped as part of a gang initiation, and you asked me if I would like someone to hold my rapist down and play for him Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," I'd probably think about it for a minute, and then say, "Well, the thing is, he needs to join a gang to survive on the inside, and he had a rough childhood..."

[I include in this category fictional "rock stars" as well, in particular the California Raisins cover of "We Three Kings" from the old Claymation Christmas Special...Holy shit, I'm old.]

4. Christmas-Themed Lounge Music

Yeah, Jose Feliciano singing "Feliz Navidad," I'm looking in your direction. But this also includes those various versions of "Mele Kaliki Maka," or something like that. That Hawaiian Christmas song. You know..."Mele Kaliki Maka is the thing to say/On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day"...I think Dean Martin's verison is in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Anyway, the mix of skeezy Reno-style lounge acts with a holiday that's supposed to represent love and togetherness earns them a place on the list.

5. Songs That Reduce Christmas To a Bunch of Meaningless Symbols

"Silver Bells," for example. Talk about a nothing song. There's some Silver Bells. It's Christmas time. There's a city...Give me something to goddamn work with! That one Burl Ives sang, that "Silver and Gold" one, that one's just about colors. And they're not even the traditional Christmas colors.

That Nat King Cole Christmas song just cobbles together random Christmas-y images. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...Jack Frost nipping at your nose...Yes, yes? Got anything else for me? Oh, that's it? You're just throwing out winter time stuff to us? And no one roasts chestnuts any more anyway, because that's weird. Planters salted peanuts, Nat, it's called the 20th Century...Look into it.

6. Novelty Christmas Songs

This is the lowest circle of my particular Christmas Song Hell. I hate hate hate hate hate nothing more in this world than novelty Christmas songs. The worst offenders?

3. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

What, is that supposed to be funny? This is that awful cornpone redneck humor, a type of comedy so reductive and lame that it has remained essentially unchanged for the past 100 years. Only now, the racism is a bit more subtextual, rather than being right there in the open. Most of the time. Don't believe me? Check out Larry the Cable Guy.

2. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

No song should ever make it this easy for the pornography industry. You're just begging one of those perverts to make fun of your title with a softball like this. For shame...

1. Jingle Bell Rock

The single most atrocious Christmas-themed piece of music ever conceived. This is not rock. Who the hell wrote "Jingle Bell Rock"? Are their descendants wealthy to this day because of this mindless, shrill piece of shit? That fills me with whatever is the exact polar opposite of The Christmas Spirit.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!