Subliminal Christmas Helltunes

[missdiane]

So I'm sitting eating lunch at a little bakery and they have a radio station playing Xmas tunes. I foolishly started paying attention to the lyrics and realized that damn, many of them are creepy as all hell. Now there's the more obvious depressing ones like "Blue Christmas" where most of the time it's Elvis pissing and moaning about some chick that clearly doesn't have an interest in dealing with his drama around the holidays, and the same sort of whiny theme for "Please Come Home for Christmas with this oh-not-depressing-at-ALL bit:

My baby's gone I have no friends
To wish me greetings once again

Bud, pull it together! Even "I'll Be Home for Christmas" leads you to believe it's hopeful until you get to the end:

I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Passive aggressive much, dude? Ok, so I get it. It's the time of year people off themselves because they're depressed. No need to beat us over the head. But then there's other ones that seem ok until you listen to them. The song that first made me go "damn, really?" was "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" which prompted me to tweet
"We Wish You a Merry Xmas" is a bunch of bitch-ass extortionists demanding pudding or they'll continue their singing sit-in.

If you listen to it, it's annoying AF:
Now bring us some figgy pudding
Now bring us some figgy pudding
Now bring us some figgy pudding
And a cup of good cheer

We won't go until we get some
We won't go until we get some
We won't go until we get some
So bring it right here

If I got that kind of crap from carolers, I'd be tempted to yell "Now listen you rude drunken asswipes, get off my porch before I toss a carafe of hot coffee on you!"

Heck, even in "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" the parental frustration with the holiday is palpable with this bit:
A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again.

Heh, hope I didn't ruin too much for you. Just spike the hell out of that eggnog and warble "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" and you'll be fine.

Comments

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

There's a very popular Christmas song here with the lyrics,...

"They said there'd be snow at Christmas, they said they'll be peace on Earth,
But instead it just kept on raining, a veil of tears for the Virgin birth
They sold me a dream of Christmas, they sold me a Silent Night,
They told me a fairy story, til I believed in the Israelite.
And I believed in Father Christmas, I looked to the sky with excited eyes
Then I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn and I saw him threw his disguise
They said they'd be snow at Christmas, they said they'll be peace on Earth,
Hallelujah, Noel, be it heaven or hell, the Christmas we get we deserve."

[missdiane.livejournal.com]

DAMN! That one is SAVAGE

So...we're supposed to be like...celebrating this holiday? I'm getting conflicting messages here.

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

Well you have a point, the religious part of the Holiday is pretty conflicting too as it involves an event of mass infanticide. My favourite carol at school used to be Coventry Carol which is a medieval song for the part in the Nativity Play where the other Mothers sing a lullaby for their murdered babies. Cheery stuff.

[missdiane.livejournal.com]

Crap, I like that song too!

Well, I looked it up and my fave "Carol of the Bells" seems to be harmless enough - if not annoying when the wrong group does it. Like OMG this earsplitter

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

oh my God, the cats! the cats! Arrrggg. Actually although the lyrics are fine "Carol of the Bells" does have a tone which is quite dark and scary.

Coventry Carol is darker now because the BBC broadcast it as their Christmas Service out of the ruins of what was the Medieval-era Coventry Cathedral the first Christmas after the entire city was flattened by the Nazis. As the name of the Carol suggests, Coventry had a long history and religious importance which made it important to British culture. For it's destruction, the British retaliated by deliberately destroying the equally culturally important Dresden Cathedral and it's city as payback, despite the fact they knew it wasn't a military target and would not achieve anything strategically. It's usually given as a warning to try to not let fear turn us into Monsters, because after the revenge goes away it's very hard to live with what you've done. It's ironic that Coventry Carol is about the Massacre of the Innocents because "Coventry" in the 20th Century is basically shorthanded for a lament for all the innocents who get caught up in powerplays between soldiers, kings, winged angels and tyrants who forget their little lives have value. The stories focus on righteous noble heroes and dark villains locked in a fight between good and evil, but then there's also the actual important subplot where all the normal powerless innocents die as a consequence of the evil and good existing, God could have arranged for Mary to give birth in the middle of nowhere, or sent more angels to tell the other children to leave Bethlehem. I'm sure all the children could have gone with Jesus to Egypt, or at least save one or two of the others, as "friends" for Baby Jesus.

[missdiane.livejournal.com]

I'll have to say, my reaction to that was pretty much this lack-of-intelligent response


You know what, though. Embrace Coventry Carol as your favorite. Because with a badass story like that, it certainly lends a hell of a lot more gravitas to the holiday than Santa cramming his fat butt down a chimney and people beating each other up for 42" TVs on Black Friday here.

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

Over the last 5 years or so the American Companies like Amazon or Asda [they're part of the Walmart Family] have started trying to launch "Black Friday" as a thing here - although it doesn't make any sense because we don't have Thanksgiving so there's no logical reason for discounts to be happening now, they should happen in the New Year after Christmas. The only reason I can see for them doing it is because then they can synchronise their branding with the much bigger US market - it makes no commercial sense for them, to make the TV cheaper now for me, right about now in the shopping weeks running up to Christmas is when I'm desperate enough to fork out money for the TV, I fundamentally don't trust it.