OT Advent Calendar Day 21: Silly Christmas Songs

Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.

Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.

Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Today’s theme is Silly Christmas Songs.

Building from yesterday’s second song about children beating a log with sticks until it poops out Christmas presents, today’s theme is a catch all for the light, silly songs we encounter around the Holidays: silly Christmas songs. The difference between silly Christmas songs and the Crimes Against Christmas may, at times, be a fine line, but that line is a critical one. The difference is that these songs at no time take themselves seriously, while the latter very much did.

IF I CAN’T HAVE LAWN DARTS, SUZIE, YOU CAN’T HAVE A HIPPO

Hippos are cute in pictures.

In reality, they are ornery, bad tempered killers, responsible for as many as three thousand deaths a year.

While not illegal, owning one or more hippos and not being a zoo will get you little sympathy at your funeral. Go play Hungry Hungry Hippos. Those marbles? Those are your friends, family and loved ones.

Want to know who thought hippo ownership was a great idea? Pablo Escobar. Now Pablo is dead and the hippos escaped from his ranch and now Colombia has a major Invasive Coke Hippo problem.

The song is cute, though.

And I may know a guy who never threw out his lawn darts.

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE “MURDER APPOLOGIST”

I’ll start, if I may, at the beginning, and get to the part about the sick twisted family in question in a moment.

I have a major pet peeve when it comes to Christmas movies, songs and stories and it is this: If the media in question is premised on the idea that some people don’t believe in Santa Claus, you’ve let the cat out of the bag. I’m looking at you, Elf, Miracle on 34th Street, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus,” “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” &c, &c.

Now, to the crime in question.

The crime that takes place in “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is as realistic as the murder that is the premise of the game Clue, in which a murder has occurred but not only does nobody know if the deceased was shot, strangled, stabbled or beaten to death but a murder so brutal as to leave that question open was apparently done so cleanly that its location is unknown in a house where only six other people were present.

My first question on investigation would be, “Which of you knows how to remove and dispose of three quarters of a gallon of human blood in under fifteen minutes.”

But I digress, yet again.

The evidence which will make it clear that Grandpa killed Grandma and the kid singing the song is covering for him consists of a verse and a half, when viewed in the light cast by the chorus.

She’d been drinkin’ too much egg nog
And we’d begged her not to go
But she’d left her medication
So she stumbled out the door into the snow

The first verse. Grandma clearly has a bit of a problem, but the kid clearly places the blame on her for going out into the snow.

In the next verse we get a description of the scene, but it’s poorly written and I have no idea what “incriminatin’ Clause marks on her back” are supposed to be other than a lazy pun and lazier poetry.

Now were all so proud of Grandpa
He’s been takin’ this so well

Huh. You don’t say. Decades of marriage and the very next day you’re cool with the fact that your wife allegedly got run down in the middle of the night? Nothing suspicious about that at all.

Better have a pretty good cover story, if you want to stay out of jail, Grandpa.

You can say there’s no such thing as Santa
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe

It’s a good thing Grandpa doesn’t look like Santa!

Oh.

HEE HAW, HEE HAW

Donkeys have a close association with Christmas. The folklore and symbolism are long standing—did you know that the cruciform pattern of black hair on an ass’s back was because one of their kind carried Our Lady to Bethlehem?—but that is no excuse for “Dominick the Donkey.”

It’s playful, sure.

But, I’m sorry.