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.