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Nov 24, 2021

The 10 Most Depressing Christmas Songs

November is my favorite month.  The air is brisk and cool but not too cold for jogging, it gets dark at a normal hour, tv and the theater are going strong.  Even though there's my birthday and Thanksgiving to celebrate, it's still relaxed and easygoing.

Then suddenly it's December, cold and dark all the time, people scatter, the campus is deserted, you have 1000 papers to grade, and you spend two weeks running around at breakneck speed buying and wrapping presents, putting up decorations and a tree, addressing cards, planning and going to about 1000 parties, getting sugar overload.  Then you get on an overcrowded airplane to spend two more weeks doing it all over again back home with the relatives.

All the while you're expected to be deliriously happy.  If you lose that robotic grin for an instant, you're ostracized as a Scrooge and a Grinch.

To facilitate your delirious happiness, you are subjected to a constant barrage of music specific to the season.  The problem is, most Christmas songs are not happy.  They're wistful, nostalgic, mourning lost youth and long-gone friends, or else bemoaning the fact that time is passing, we're all getting old and going to die soon. 

How are you supposed to be joyful when all of the songs you hear are about loss and despair?

Here's a list of the worst offenders.

1. White Christmas.  "Just like the ones I used to know."  A bittersweet look at Christmas past, in our long-gone childhood, before global warming, with a slow, lugubrious melody that makes you want to cry.

2. The Christmas Song ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire").  Humorous lyrics with a wistful, sad melody.  Talk about mixed signals!  Mel Torme, who is Jewish, wrote this on the beach in Florida.  There was no Jack Frost nipping at his nose.

3. The Little Drummer Boy.  There are actually no lyrics to this song, or just a few.  Mostly it's nonstop onomatopoeia ("rum tum tum"), and a slow, wistful melody.

4. Home for the Holidays.  You've got to be kidding.  When you see your relatives only once a year, they're strangers, and they've suddenly gotten a lot older, thus reminding you of your own inevitable progression toward death.  Oh, wait, the singer isn't really going home for the holidays; it's just a masochistic fantasy.

5. Holly Jolly Christmas.  Horrible heterosexist lyrics.

6. Good King Wenceslaus.  A beggar freezing to death finds his way through the snow by following the king's footprints.  All with a horrible ponderous melody.




7. We Three Kings.  The third king brings myrh: "bitter perfume, breathes a life of gathering doom."  You got that right.

8. We Need a Little Christmas.  Life is hard.  We've grown a little older, grown a little colder.  Holly and mistletoe won't help.  I heard this for the first time on an episode of The Facts of Life 30 years ago.

9. Blue Christmas.  Goes without saying.









And the worst of the worst:

10. Have Yourself a Merry...well, you know.  About the swift passage of time and the inevitability of death.  Judy Garland refused to sing the first version -- it was too depressing even for the Queen of Sad Songs.




12 comments:

  1. Not so miserable as the modern hipster Christmas songs. Try some of these gems:
    Sister Winter - Sufjan Stevens
    I made you cry on Christmas Day (well you deserved it) - Sufjan Stevens
    Gift X-change - Calexico

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  2. No "Baby, It's Cold Outside"? The song's about rape.

    "White Christmas" makes me think of nostalgia. And how 90s nostalgia made the Dotard inevitable.

    The whole season is depressing. Let's be honest: The iconic Christmas movie is about suicide. The season is kicked off with rich people demanding a mêlée, sometimes fatal, in order to pay them less for shit we don't need; are they not entertained?

    I swear, Black Friday is the Hunger Games.

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    Replies
    1. I don't include songs that are set in the wintertime but don't mention Christmas, like "Jingle Bells." "Baby It's Cold Outside" isn't bad -- the two people don't have to be male and female. The one protesting states that he wants to stay, but is worried about what his family and the neighbors will think.

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    2. I remember a whole half-joking theory that DC Comics has been cribbing from the schoolyard parody about Batman. Mostly for Jason Todd. Hey, his resurrection has heterosexist elements!

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  3. All the Christmas songs are so tiresome - I'm sick of hearing them play the same thing over and over every year! I think one of the most stupid of all is "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" - nauseating!

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  4. "Baby It's Cold Outside" is not a song about rape- it's a seduction duet in which both partners know the tease game they are playing. "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" is funny.

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  5. Regarding "chestnuts' my late friend Jeff's family and myself had a world fun... Jeff's nuts roasting on an open fire...rest in peace brother

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  6. The songs are sad to me because every year it seems like the people who program store holiday music think the entire holiday was created in 1945. It is also sad because it appears that the only thing Burl Ives will be remembered for is the egregious 'Holly Jolly Christmas'.

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  7. My favorite Christmas song was always '2000 Miles' by The Pretenders. But you're right, the lyrics are depressing.

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  8. My nominees for three ghastliest Christmas songs, in reverse order...

    3. 'Santa Came On A Nuclear Missle' - Y'ever hear of song-poems? They're the product of those ads you probably saw in old magazines: "Have your poems set to music! Song-writers wanted!" Would-be wordsmiths would send their attempted lyrics along with a few, usually about fifty to a hundred dollars, and get back a record with said lyrics set to music by session musicians working on commission and cranking out hundreds of these things each day. However, some of these were re-discovered by record collectors, who found them often charming and/or off-kilter.
    Hence, 'Santa Came On A Nuclear Missle,' a bizarre excursion into future shock where our protagonist waits for Santa on Christmas eve but when he arrives, he's a terrifying alien being who, instead of toys, gives her a laser gun. She pleads at the end for Santa not to make her nightmare come true and come as he always has, in his reindeer-drawn sleigh.

    2. 'Santa's In A Wheelchair' - By The Kids of Widney High, who meant well. This was a class of physically and mentally disabled students who were encouraged by their teacher to write and perform their own songs. This was their Christmas offering.
    It seems Santa is delivering presents on Christmas Eve when he slips on an icy roof, falls, and winds up paralyzed. The Kids lend him a wheelchair so he can still get around. They also stress they don't make fun of Santa or feel condescending pity for him and still love him as much as ever because he's Santa.

    1. 'Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year' - By Tiny Tim, the novelty singer. I'm a fan, actually, but this was a definite misstep. Santa explains to all the kids out there he won't be able to make his usual rounds this year because he's laid up with "the AIDS." It's mildly comforting Tiny doesn't quite seem to know what AIDS actually is; he seems to think it's a STD like herpes or the clap he can joke about. It was a low point in his career, frankly.

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    Replies
    1. I'm surprised that Tiny Tim's career lasted long enough for him to sing about AIDS.

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