Bourgeois Nerd's Favorite Christmas Songs:
"Jingle Bells" (Gotta love the classics!)
"Deck the Halls" (I want some boughs of holly!)
"Silent Night" (This song's actually as pretty in the original German as it is in English.)
"Holly, Jolly Christmas" (Nothing beats Berl Ives as a claymation snowman with a banjo!)
"Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rocking Around The Christmas Tree" (I always get these two mixed up, but I love both. I mean, what's NOT to love about rockabilly Christmas songs?)
"O Tannenbaum/Oh Christmas Tree" (Depends on how Teutonic you're feeling what you want to call it.)
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" (If the Fates allow, of course! What the Fates have to do with a holiday celebrating a deity from a completely different belief system, I don't know.)
"White Christmas" (I don't think I've ever actually had a white Christmas; several white Thanksgivings, but no Christmases.)
"I'll Be Home For Christmas" (The last line, "I'll be home for Christmas/if only in my dreams" always gets to me.)
"Last Christmas" (What can I say, I love the cheesy 80s stuff! There's a new version of it I heard by Jimmy Eat World or something that's actually not that awful, but it'll never replace the one, the only George Michael original. This is actually one of my mother and me's favorite Christmas songs to listen to on the radio as we go around shopping.)
"All I Want For Christmas (Is You)" (Just about the only thing Mariah sings I actually like.)
"Little Drummer Boy" (Rum-pum-pum-pum!)
"Santa Baby" (Who can resist Eartha Kitt purring about getting diamonds? Madonna's version is actually pretty good, too.)
"Here Comes Santa Claus" (I always wanted to live on Santa Claus Lane.)
"Twelve Days of Christmas" (Just because I love how no one can ever really get through it, because it's long as hell and no one really knows all the parts.)
"The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting)" (It's just not Christmas without Nat King Cole.)
"Dominic, The Italian Christmas Donkey" (I'd never heard of this song until my sister started dating my very Italian now-brother-in-law, but now it's one of my favorites in the "really stupid, but still somehow cute" category. Yee-haw-yee-haw!)
"Run, Run Rudolph" (One of the few Christmas songs that really makes you want to dance.)
"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" (Grandma's a lush and the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Merry Christmas!)
"Happy XMas (War Is Over)" (Who would have thought Yoko Ono could help create a good Christmas song?)
"I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" (Your mother's a whooooooooore! Call me when Daddy's kissing Santa Claus, though.)
"Mele Kalikimaka" (Indelibly linked to one of my favorite Christmas movies, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.)
For more on Christmas music, Wikipedia is, as usual, a treasure trove.
1 comment:
(If the Fates allow, of course! What the Fates have to do with a holiday celebrating a deity from a completely different belief system, I don't know.)
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was written for Meet me in St. Louis, which was an attempt to recreate the box office smash The Wizard of Oz, down to the point of casting Judy Garland in it. In the movie, the point of the song was that even though the family was moving, they could still have a Merry Little Christmas.
But since songs in those days also needed to be hits on the radio, and since World War II was raging, the lyrics hinted at being reunited after the war. The lyrics were slightly different than what is usually sung today: Through the years we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.
It's a sad little song, but filled with hope--perfect, I think, for Christmas.
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