Somehow, these songs never die

Nothing says festive like terminal illness and eventual death!

I suppose it’s inevitable that tear-jerking trauma is commingled with Christmas cheer. Even Dickens interposed Tiny Tim into his Christmas carol.

There’s just something so very grubby, and manipulative, about efforts to sell songs by taking advantage of the emotionally vulnerable.

The reigning champion of this effort is “The Christmas Shoes,” which has been for three years the animating horror of your intrepid team here at Christmas Spirit Fail:

This song has spawned an execrable film and a novelization, not to mentioned being played every seven minutes on the radio from November 1 to December 25. It’s so awful that there is nothing we can say that would call attention to this abomination that it doesn’t do for itself.

But country-Christian crooner Matthew West has a strong contender to knock the “Shoes” off their pedestal, and that’s “One Last Christmas”:

It is the story of a toddler, Dax, diagnosed with leukemia, and how his family goes all out to give him “one last Christmas” before they lose him. (It has also been turned into an F-list movie.)

Now, CSF is fully sympathetic to the families whose Christmases come tinged with loss, grief, and sadness. (Indeed, CSF was itself treated for cancer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where Dax also received treatment, and feels a pang when reading Dax’s story.)

But songs like “The Christmas Shoes” and “One Last Christmas” don’t  memorialize the dead and comfort the survivors; they trivialize the loss and commercialize the lost. The Christmas Shoes lady and Dax both died, but these songs will play on forever–and that’s a triple tragedy.

“I am a poor singer too, pa rum pa pum pum”

As a song, “The Little Drummer Boy” (the “The Carol of the Drum”) is one of the most annoying additions to the Christmas canon. As a film, it decidedly tilts the Rankin/Bass holiday special verdict toward cloying.

But its greatest offense has been to provide “inspiration” for literally hundreds of cover artists. One of the worst we at Christmas Spirit Fail have ever heard is Justin Bieber’s:

For this abomination, we must give a tip of the homburg to the Divine Professor A, and turn it over to her:

Having found the lyric genuinely amusing, I listened to the song and found it immensely annoying. I think I’d managed thus far in life to avoid hearing the voice of Justin Bieber. It’s so irritating!… especially when accompanied by constant snare drumming, which is, apparently, regarded as essential, even when layering in rap, for anybody doing a new arrangement of that always awful song “Drummer Boy.”

Which reminds me, if you ever feel like giving me a gift, and you think all you’ve got to give is that drum number you’re threatening to perform, realize you are making a mistake. There’s also the gift of silence. I’d prefer that. I know baby Jesus reputedly appreciated the gift of drumming — according to that nasty song — but consider the possibility that Jesus was just being nice. I know, politeness is a quality alien to infants, but — come on! — it was Jesus! Put the damned drum away.

Althouse: an honorary Christmas Spirit Failer if ever there was. Welcome to our curmudgeonly fireside.

Mariah, call off your fans

We at Christmas Spirit Fail have long considered Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to be “something delightful.” What people do with it, however, is usually nothing sort of dreadful.

With a tip of our hat to our excellent jam-mistress and wondrous pilgrim comes this sad homage to Miss Carey. And yes, so that the visually impaired can be fully horrified, it is a male/female pair of prancing around in leotards and Christmas stockings and lip-synching.

And now, the visual nightmare:

Pucker Up

Hello again, friends! Once again, it’s the time of year when radio stations start shaking things up by shelving their regular rotation of 20 songs in favor of their Christmas mix. You might be thinking, “Finally! I get a reprieve from Justin Bieber.” Not so fast. Standard practice among pop stars seems to be that once they reach a certain level of popularity, they take it upon themselves to reinterpret holiday favorites and to add one or two new, poorly written tunes to the anthology of bad Christmas music. This year, Justin Bieber assaults our ears with his original song, “Mistletoe.”

This should be a melancholy tune because he laments the holiday activities he’s missing due to spending time under the mistletoe. I guess it’s ok because he’s going to be ”With you, shawty with you. With you, shawty with you. With you under the mistletoe.” I assume his tween fans insert themselves into this by imagining that he’s singing directly to them. Have your ears started bleeding yet? No? Keep listening for lines like, “I don’t want to miss out on the holiday, but I can’t stop staring at your face,” and “Wise men followed a star, the way I followed my heart.” (Note: those lyrics are intended to rhyme.)  

The music video contradicts the song, showing him outside in the snow-one of the things he’s supposedly not doing because he’s under the mistletoe. He also proves that he’s finally old enough to drive by briefly cruising in, but mostly just standing in front of, a Porsche. It would be much more appropriate to show him idly standing below a ball of mistletoe, staring at some girl, while the camera cuts to his friends and family enjoying the season without him. Sadly, they didn’t ask for my creative direction. Maybe next time…

The feds should go after this kind of sugary treat…

We at Christmas Spirit Fail hang our homburg in the District of Columbia, where we have for several years now enjoyed a festive and charming Christmas season, accented by the “national” Christmas trees and other public displays. (The wreaths at Union Station may be our favorite.)

And since there’s no chance that a pleasant thing won’t get ruined by attempts to memorialize it in song:

The music alone makes our teeth ache, but the lyrics are worse: like a cut-rate Peggy Noonan under a close deadline to bang out a religious-patriotic holiday column, Maura Sullivan (the singer) and John London’s syrupy verse places even Christmas under the thumb of our federal frolic-masters in “America’s hometown.”

(That’s right: they call it “America’s hometown.” Notwithstanding the fact that at least half of D.C. area residents were born somewhere else, and often call that place their hometown, what claim does the federal city have of being the place where Americans devote their patriotic affection? I think Philly has a much better claim.)

And the chorus ought to offend every red-blooded American:

Interfail relations

We here at Christmas Spirit Fail aren’t MOTs, but we extend a Happy Hanukkah to all our Jewish readers.

At first we thought we would send out this video as a Hanukkah greeting; after all, it’s been circulating pretty extensively on the blogs we read.

And yes, it’s a pretty good beat. And a pretty fun video put together by the Maccabeats, a delightfully named a capella troupe at Yeshiva University. But we had never heard of “Dynamite” or Mike Tompkins, and when we realized that “Candlelight” is a knockoff/parody/tribute, we were no longer as amused.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled tidings of comfort and goy.

Can you handel the ’80s?

A merry Advent for a new year, Christmas Spirit Failers! Your favorite misanthropes had thought about hanging up their knit cap after last year, but let’s face it — awful Christmas music just goes on and on and on and on. And we haven’t even gotten to “The Christmas Shoes” yet.

But save that for another time. Here, we have what appears to be three-fourths of a Goth-ABBA tribute band strutting across a faux-marble stage while belting out a synco-pop version of “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted,” from Handel’s Messiah.

The band was called First Call, and this video dates to 1989[?], a contemporary Christian version of Messiah that features a whole array of mediocre singers, ear-rending accompaniment, and 80s hair.

Indeed, every great oratorio shall be made low.

Keep this thing in a galaxy far, far away

This post features what is perhaps the most awful piece of cultural detritus ever produced to take advantage of the Christmas season. It’s not so-bad-it’s-good. It’s painful to watch, especially for two hours. Indeed, it’s completely forgettable, except that it’s the bastard stepchild of one of the most profitable cultural franchises of all time:

The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Where to begin with this hideous thing? (George Lucas himself said that “if I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.”) The bizarre roster of guest stars? The fact that the first ten minutes, and much of the rest, are in untranslated Wookiee, as if this was some kind of grad student art film? Carrie Fisher’s “Happy Life Day” solo at the end? The acid-trip sequences? Bea Arthur as proprietress of the Mos Eisley cantina? The seduction of Chewbacca’s father by a holographic Diahann Carroll?

The Holiday Special merges the worst of George Lucas’s imagination, commercial exploitation, and the (in)aesthetics of the 70s.

Better than a hippo

Also in the annals of adorable little girls singing irritating songs about Christmas is Gayla Peevey, who recorded “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in 1953 at age ten.

Gayla’s is actually a somewhat inspiring story. The song became a nationwide hit, propelling the Oklahoma child star to national renown amusement. The Oklahoma City Zoo used the song to raise funds to buy a hippopotamus, which Gayla herself presented to the zoo.

Gayla went on to have an unremarkable career as a child singer and then, under a stage name as a teenager, pop singer. But this Christmas story actually has a happy ending: unlike so many child stars, Gayla ended up finishing college, enjoying careers in teaching and advertising, and having a daughter and three grandkids (if Wikipedia is to be believed).

So, gentle readers, even if Gayla never got her own hippo for Christmas, she got a lot more out of life.

Do they know how awful they sound at all?

File this obnoxious little ditty under “Not Getting It, Department of.”

Leave aside the execrable pop/rock tune. Leave aside Bob Geldof’s ghastly 80s hairstyle. And leave aside the fact that this song is all about moral posturing with other people’s resources.

Leave all this aside and merely consider the ludicrous lyrics that alone make this a Christmas Spirit Fail.

• “And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy / Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime.” This is just BS on the level of “We Are the World.” It means nothing.
• “Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears / And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom.” Well, the Congo River has the second-heaviest flow of any river in the world. And the Nile is the world’s longest. Dammit, Africa is overflowing with natural resources. It’s not like the whole continent is some kind of wasteland. If China can extract Africa’s resources, why not Africa? Moreover, this song was written to raise support for famine relief. Amartya Sen showed, however, that famine is more of a political problem than a resource problem. “Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence. . . . They disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press.” It’s no coincidence that a mostly undemocratic continent conforms to Sen’s sad logic.
  
• “There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime.” O RLY? (Actually, there will be.)
• “(Oooh) Where nothing ever grows / No rain nor rivers flow.” That “oooh” is some good poetry there, man. But seriously, see comment above.
• “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” No comment necessary, but seriously, that’s all there is to this song. The single may have been used to raise money for anti-hunger efforts, but the words themselves leave you in a place of smug depression at the sad state of the world, poor them.

This ghastly ballad ends with a “(Here’s to you) raise a glass for everyone / (Here’s to them) underneath that burning sun,” signifying nothing done other than sanctimonious moral preening. Merry Christmas, yeah right.

P.S. What would it take to get a supergroup of pop/rock stars to record an anti-foreign-aid single based on Dambisa Moyo’s book?