A Blue Christmas (with lyrics from Green Day and Paramore)

Christmas is almost here, so everyone has to be happy.  If you aren't, go sit in the corner until you come back with a hearty dose of Christmas cheer and you're ready to sing loud for all to hear.

Go. Celebrate family togetherness. Be thankful for what you have. Put on an overly colorful sweater and drink some eggnog. Enjoy some time away from work.

You have to. Whether you like it or not. Even if your family doesn't really like you and your life is lacking what seems most important (including an ugly Christmas sweater) and you don't get any extra time off for the holidays.

It's Christmas time, so plaster a smile on your face. Go shopping. If you buy things for people, they will like you. Right?

Today's the Macy's Day parade
Night of the living dead is on its way
with the credit report for duty called...

When I was a kid I thought
I wanted all the things that I haven't got
Oh, but I learned the hardest way...

Listen to the Christmas carols on the radio and see the pretty lights. Watch Elf and It's a Wonderful Life and drink some hot cider and get warm and fuzzy all over, whether you feel it or not. Most importantly, go spend some money. That's what our society promises will make you happy. Isn't it?

...then I realized what it took
to tell the difference between thieves and crooks
a lesson learned for me and you.

Give me something that I need
Satisfaction guaranteed to you.
What's the consolation prize?
Economy-sized dreams of hope...

And while you're at it, don't forget to take a moment--just a moment--to reflect on the deeper meaning of the day. It's the day that God personally came down to earth so that he could relate to the struggles we face first-hand and ultimately overcome them. And in his name, all oppression shall cease.

Eventually.

But probably not this Christmas season.

(I scraped my knees when I was praying
Found a demon in my safest haven.
Seems like it's getting harder to believe in anything
But just to get lost in all my selfish thoughts...)

Count your blessings this year. So many dreams have come. So many hopes fulfilled. So many seemingly impossible challenges that are now only distant memories. You did the right thing, and you always got rewarded for it, right? Right? Good things always happen to good people, after all. Because they deserved them. Just like you did!

(...I want to know what it'd be like
to find perfection in my pride
to see nothing in the light
Or turn it off, in all my spite
In all my spite, I'll turn it off...)

Or maybe you can't find much worthy of celebrating this holiday season and find yourself going through the motions instead.

Maybe the only thing you really want is a little break, but instead your Christmas looks more like your overly burdened regular life, only on steroids. Maybe life circumstances have you feeling like Christmas is going to fly by this year without you even having a chance to stop and notice it. Maybe it doesn't feel like Christmas because something's missing from your comfortable routine, and there's no way to get it back. Or maybe the whole enterprise is lost in the midst of a bigger life drama. Who can be excited about Christmas when you can barely survive the day?

(...And the worst part is
before it gets
any better we're
headed for a cliff
but in the freefall, I
will realize
I'm better off
when I hit the bottom)

-Turn it Off (Paramore)

If any of the above sounds familiar, don't worry. Despite what our culture tells you, you don't have to be happy this Christmas. Feel free to hit rock bottom instead. Things can only get better from there, and sometimes you have to find the point where all your plans and hopes go awry before you can set free your sense of control.

So, your plans for life didn't work out. It doesn't mean there isn't a better plan out there. And as Hayley Williams suggests above, you'll get farther by turning off your own expectations than by turning off your faith. Maybe that thing you'd hoped for wasn't the right thing anyway.

...Cause I'm thinking about a brand new hope
The one I've never known, and where it goes.
And I'm thinking about the only road
The one I've never know, and where it goes

'Cause now I know
That it's all that I wanted.

-Macy's Day Parade (Green Day)

So, maybe it's been a crappy year and you're in a bad place in life. Maybe your troubles won't actually be far away this Christmas. It doesn't always have to be this way. There's a beautiful story out there to be lived, one where the hero gets through the conflict and finds a happy ending. That story might as well be yours.

The things we think we want are often smaller than the things that will actually bring us joy and peace. That new car won't make you happy. That broken relationship wasn't bringing out the best in you. That loneliness has made you look deeper into your soul and think about how to re-focus your energy. That disappointment wasn't the end of the line. But while you're dealing with it, buying stuff you don't need isn't going to make you happy.

You might want to turn off your faith in all that sustains you right now, but ultimately, it will be the very thing that guides you through.

So if you can't find much to celebrate this Christmas--if you can't find anything to celebrate at all--at least take comfort in what you can hope for, allowing for the possibility it might come in a different form than what you had planned.  And take even more comfort in the idea that maybe there's something even better out there for you than what you've allowed yourself to hope.

And when it comes, maybe you'll know that it's all that you ever wanted.

Bad Christmas Songs

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means the music on the radio is beginning to sound a lot like crap.

As we discussed in this space last year, few things irk the soul quite like bad Christmas songs.  While plenty of wonderful Christmas songs help to make the season bright, on the flip side, just because a song mentions something about Christmas or snow doesn't make it good.

Plenty of songs are overly sappy or nonsensical, or in some cases, send appalling social messages.

As suggested by a reader last year (thanks Niki!) nothing epitomizes the latter category quite like "Baby It's Cold Outside," which she appropriate referred to as "The Date Rape Song."

The premise of the song is that the woman needs to go home for the night ("I really can't stay...") but the abusive jerk with whom she finds herself alone won't let her go. ("Baby, it's cold out there. It's up to your knees out there.") 

Her family "will be suspicious" she says. "Your lips look delicious," the wicked, tone-deaf pervert replies.

She asks for his coat to counteract the cold on her way; he offers to pour her a drink. "What's in this drink?" she questions, clearly having determined the character of her would-be assailant.  In response, he changes the subject in a transparent admission of guilt: "there are no cabs to be had out there."

"I ought to say no, no, no, sir," she implores.

"Mind if I come a little bit closer?" he replies, presumable with electric carving knife in hand.

And so it goes. 

The tune of this horribly awful song is unfortunately catchy, so people ignore the lyrics. But there's really no reason it should be played at Christmas time.  Like Jingle Bells, or "Let it Snow" the narrative takes place in winter, but there's nothing specifically Christmas-y about it. If they are going to play these songs on the radio, there's no reason to limit them to December.

And speaking of Jingle Bells, have you ever actually listened to those lyrics outside of the chorus?

A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was sitting by my side
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank 
And then he got upsot

Oh jingle bells, jingle bells...

The events described are horrible. This is what passes for holiday cheer?

That poor, overworked animal needs to be put out of his misery, or maybe sold to a gentle farm where he can graze lazily in the pasture instead of carrying his master's lazy bones (not to mention his "Fanny") through a snowstorm on an ill-conceived joyride.

But when the chorus hits, we're left to forget about the poor equine and asked go bopping along to the cheerful chorus.

Frosty the Snowman fares no better on the social-message scale:

He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop
He only paused a moment when
He heard him holler stop.

In other words, when Little Suzy gets flattened by an oncoming semi-truck, you can thank her little snowman friend. The same "friend" who teaches kids to listen to ignore authority figures in favor of their "eccentric" 6-foot friend who for some reason only likes to hang out with little children.

But not all bad Christmas songs sent negative messages. Some are just odd.

The answer to "What child is this?" seems pretty obvious. It was Jesus.

I don't know why anyone "saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day." Bethlehem is not on the coast, and the wise men didn't even come from that direction.

"Do you hear what I hear" implies that the shepherds heard "a child, a child shivering in the cold" and decided to "bring him silver and gold." Actually, the Gospels don't mention silver, and it was the wise men who brought the gold.  And if they heard the Christ child cry from Bethlehem to Babylon, then he really did have a divine set of lungs.

Some songs are bad, but at least entertainingly so. Last year's favorite "Feed the World/Let Them Know It's Christmas Time" is a good--errr--bad example.

George Michael's "Last Christmas" is another. Let's start with the chorus:

Last Christmas I gave you my heart.
The very next day, you gave it away.

How, exactly, did that transaction work? Who did he give it to?  Did he take it to a soup kitchen? Give it to some other lonely dude? (if so, how come that didn't work out?) Return it for store credit at Macy's?

Was it like the time my 8th grade crush gave my valentine to her little sister?

Whatever the case, that line doesn't make any sense, which is especially aggravating because the line so easily could have read "the very next day you tore it apart." That makes much more sense, and it even rhymes!

If you can overlook that line, the song is a poignant reflection on love lost but not entirely forgotten can overshadow holiday joy, and it's much more relatable to modern life than songs about riding in a one-horse open sleigh, whatever that is.

But it's hard to keep the inexplicable word choice from ringing in your ears long enough to think of anything else.

Or at least it is if you hear what I hear.