Yuletide Carols: Christmas Music!

[Brookie]

Anything except that fucking hippopotamus song.

Josh Grobin doing "O Holy Night" is a keeper too. He's got the voice for singing Christmas songs.

I also have lots of Mormon Tabernacle Choir christmas tapes (yes, I said TAPES). I hooked up my old tape player to my Bose Wave radio and it's never sounded better. I love to sing along (I've been singing most of my life), so the MTC stuff is perfect for me. And they do Christmas songs as they were meant to be done, as they were written - they don't jazz them up, put in new words that don't belong or add some screechy high note thingie at the end. They just sing.

Nat doing "The Christmas Song". I never miss "White Christmas", "Charlie Brown", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (it's already been on, yipes).

[Ripley]

Anything except that fucking hippopotamus song.

Heh. The very first time that I heard that song, I thought it said, "I wanna have a lobotomy for Christmas/Only a hip lobotomist will do."

There is a local radio station that started playing Christmas music on November 1. It always puts me in a cranky mood because I'm not ready for Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

[Mutagen]

foxyepicurean said:

I love the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky (who knew I could spell that correctly?) so much that I was going to have a Christmas wedding just so I could use the music in our ceremony. We had to change the date to October, but I still used the Chinese Dance for our Flower Girl and Ring Bearer and the Waltz of the Flowers for my own processional.

Cool!!!

The Nutcracker Suite is, for me, inseparable from childhood Christmas memories. I love it.

[Brookie]

ripley said:

Anything except that fucking hippopotamus song.

Heh. The very first time that I heard that song, I thought it said, "I wanna have a lobotomy for Christmas/Only a hip lobotomist will do."

There is a local radio station that started playing Christmas music on November 1. It always puts me in a cranky mood because I'm not ready for Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

100.3FM!!! WNIC! All Christmas, Most of the Time!!

[dnt]

Dwanollah, you are too awesome! E-mailing now, hailing later...

[foxyepicurean]

Sleepy and Ripley, it was interesting hearing about your discomfort with the "Christ" part of Christmas. I've been a Christian all my life, but since it's clear that Jesus wasn't born in December (probably closer to Easter, actually), my family has never celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday. It's not that our church requires it to be one way or the other--some people we worship with go the religious holiday route and some don't. With our family, it's just never been all angels and nativity scenes. We accept that some people celebrate the day as the birthday of Christ--that's fine and good on them, but to us it's a lovely cultural tradition. We honor it as a time to spend time with the people we love, give generously, decorate everything all pretty, and eat yummy treats. Since I didn't grow up surrounded by nativity scenes and the "Happy Birthday Jesus" stuff, sometimes I'm taken aback by those who go whole hog on that aspect of the holiday. Even some Christians sometimes feel uncomfortable with that stuff--just thought you'd like to know that even for some of us regular church goers, Christmas is more about Santa and Jingle Bells and less about Baby Jesus and O Holy Night.

Topic: I'm an equal opportunity lover of old school Christmas songs--religious or not, as long as they're old school. Every time I hear about an N*Synch Christmas album or Mariah Carey screeching about the wonders of the season, I get a little violent. Even when I was a teenager and should have liked the new stuff, it wasn't happenin'. I can tell I'm going to be one of those cranky old ladies talking about how much better it was in the good old days. But my grandkids will probably figure my good old days were in the forties if Christmas music is all they have to go by.

Brookie, I was in choir all through school and Christmas concert time was my favorite. We'd always do a medley of favorites, one in Latin, one fun up-tempo song, and maybe a couple more thrown in for good measure. My favorite was my senior year because in girls' ensemble we got to sing Santa Baby (so freakin' fun) AND I didn't biff my solo on O Little Town of Bethlehem, and in regular choir, we brought 'em to their feet with our Latin song (which is rare, since those usually bore anyone who isn't actually performing). Good times. I love it when I hear one of the songs we performed in choir over the radio or in the mall. So nostalgic, sorta makes me swell with pride for how good our little choir was back in the day.

[ladymadonna]

We celebrate the commercialism of Christmas. I HATE Christmas music. HATE it. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole.... bleeeeargh. I can barely stand John Lennon's Christmas song, much less any other cheesy version of whatever.

I'm a recovering Catholic, probably a Jew at heart, and a practicing agnostic; which boils down to: We love Santa; Jesus wha?? Bring on the food and presents! I have a lucky friend whose mom is Christian and dad is Jewish so she totally gets to have Christmas and Hannukah, even though Hannukah is a way minor holiday for Jewish people. She still gets like, beaucoup presents; no fair.

[Ripley]

I can barely stand John Lennon's Christmas song,

That reminds me of my most-hated Christmas song:

"Siiimpleee haaaaaving a wonderful Christmastime!"

[dwanollah]

ripley said:

I can barely stand John Lennon's Christmas song,

That reminds me of my most-hated Christmas song:

"Siiimpleee haaaaaving a wonderful Christmastime!"

I HATE YOU BOTH!

Howzat for holiday cheer? ;D

It's not Christmastime until I've blasted "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas."

[lyrasilver]

I was raised Catholic and am now nothing (like, seriously, I don't even consider myself an atheist, just... nothing) and I still like Christmas stuff. I don't feel guilty about it, though, because as foxy said upthread, Jesus probably wasn't even born in December. Plus, I think it's become such a commercialized holiday that you can celebrate it sort of like Thanksgiving and treat it like a traditional secular thing.

Also, my next door neighbor gets Christmas and Hanukkah, and then her birthday is in January. Talk about overload on presents. I'm jellus.

Topic: I love The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." In fact, I think that was a recommendation in the Christmas music thread last year at the old place. And I have an Ella Fitzgerald Christmas album that's awesome. My all-time favorite cheesy 80s Christmas song is "Do They Know It's Christmas?" It's all about the four-second Boy George solo.