Christmas Archives - Page 7 of 20

A LOT of Christmas music

Queen of Christmas

I have a LOT of Christmas music, 100 LPs and CDs or more. This is why I rarely listen to the radio stations playing holiday music between Thanksgiving (and some even earlier) and December 25. With all the music available, why are so many stations limited to a few dozen recordings?

It’s not that I MIND them. But When my wife tunes in, I’ll hear the same song, often by the same artist, every three or four days. A lot of them are almost as old as I am. Understand I like a lot of them, but still.

Feliz Navidad – José Feliciano
White Christmas – Bing Crosby
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Burl Ives
Little Saint Nick – The Beach Boys
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee

Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
Blue Christmas – Elvis Presley
Sleigh Ride – Ella Fitzgerald
Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt
Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town – Jackson 5
The Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth – Bing Crosby/David Bowie
plus various cuts by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and more Bing

Not that I would ever complain about hearing songs from that Phil Spector album, such as:
Here Comes Santa Claus (Down Santa Claus Lane) – Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans
Frosty the Snowman – The Ronettes
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love

There are those “newer” songs if you want to call a quarter century “new”: All I Want For Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey. And speaking of Carey, her desire to trademark the term “Queen of Christmas” is pretentious and ill-advised. Darlene Love and Elizabeth Chan have raised serious objections, as they should.

Meanwhile

Here’s a link from four years ago. Besides the part about Nowell We Sing Clear, there are some of my favorite pieces, including by Tom Petty, Julie Andrews, and Stevie Wonder.

Secrets of the Advent-Christmas posts

Not that Nancy Wilson

We are now about to reveal the secrets of the Advent/Christmas posts for 2022.

Most of them I put together in late August and early September when I was recovering from COVID because I couldn’t focus on anything else.

I took this list of songs and flung them into different piles. These are songs people hate, and those are the ones that are overplayed. Of course, I always have to find a STAX Christmas list.

Do I want a Motown list? I started one and then abandoned it. Nah, they don’t move me as much. And my favorite, What Christmas Means To Me by Stevie Wonder, was on a post from 2018, which I decided to link to in its entirety. I loved those Nowell We Sing Clear tracks that kick off that piece. All of the links to that post still worked as of September 1, 2022, except one, which I switched out.

The remaining rosters I wanted to share closer to, or on, the actual holiday. Thus the songs on this list are the tunes that didn’t fit in any other pile.

Tunes

Merry Xmas (War Is Over) – John and Yoko and The Harlem Community Choir. This song always saddens me, as it’s always played in the same month as John’s death on December 8, 1980.

Mary’s Boy Child · Harry Belafonte. I’ve noted that my father’s musical stylings were clearly influenced somewhat by Harry.

Louisiana Christmas Day – Aaron Neville. This is such a fun song.

The Christmas Waltz -Nancy Wilson. This is the jazz singer, not a member of Heart. I first heard of her because her albums would be pictured on the inner sleeves of my Beatles and Beach Boys albums on Capitol Records.

Carolina Christmas – Squirrel Nut Zippers. My parents moved to NC in 1974 with my baby sister. My sister’s still living there.

Christmastime Is Here – Vince Guaraldi Trio. Why do I find the vocals of this so affecting?

Merry Christmas, Baby – Charles Brown. A great vocalist I didn’t know until I was an adult.

2000 Miles – Pretenders. The first this I heard this, I didn’t listen fully. It’s very touching.

Little Drummer Boy (African Tribal Version) – Alex Boye’ ft. Genesis Choir. This is also touching, and the family’s situation is quite believable these days.

Hamildolph! (An American Christmas Story) – Eclipse 6. A Hamilton parody, 100% a cappella.

You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch. “Written and composed for the 1966 cartoon special How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The lyrics were written by Theodor ‘Dr. Seuss’ Geisel, the music was composed by Albert Hague, and the song was performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.”

Check out Kelly’s Daily DoseDaily Dose of Christmas

Despised Tunes of Christmas

older than I thought

despised songs I found The Most Hated Christmas Songs of All Time here and The 20 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time here. Some of them I don’t know, and you really need to know songs for them to be despised tunes, don’t you think?

Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney. I’ve heard some very decent covers of this song. The song isn’t bad. This recording?

Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid. When Bob Geldof called it one of the “worst songs in history,” that says a lot. Pretentious and condescending, but its heart was in the right place.

The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late) – Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I was growing up, my parents had this single. It’s nostalgic for me.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Jackson 5. It’s corny, especially when Michael says, “I’m going to tell my daddy!”

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer – Elmo and Patsy. OK, I’ll admit it; I BOUGHT this single in the early 1980s. Not incidentally, the version that I heard on the radio was rerecorded.

All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) – Spike Jones and His City Slickers. OK, so it’s annoying, but Spike Jones often is.

River horse

I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas – Gayla Peevey. I never heard of this song until Mark Evanier posted it on Christmas Eve 2017. For a ten-year-old, she has impressive pipes.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside – She and Him. The critic finds this version “overwhelmingly twee,” whatever that means. Of course, the song generally has become controversial.

Back Door Santa – Bon Jovi. One of two songs on that original A Very Special Christmas (1987) I don’t particularly enjoy.

Here is another song I imagine some people will hate. Santa’s Too Fat For The Hula Hoop – The Pixies with Thurl Ravenscroft as Santa Claus (c 1958).

Now there is a track on both lists I hate SO much that I won’t even link to it. That would be Dominick the Donkey by Lou Monte. I thought it was a fairly recent song, but no. It was recorded in 1960. But I only heard it this century.

“The song was re-released onto Amazon on September 26, 2011, on Dexterity Records. The spelling of ‘Dominick’ was modified to ‘Dominic’… It was included in Volume 2 of the Ultimate Christmas Album series produced by Collectables Records and on the Christmas compilation album Merry Xmas 2011 by Cinquenta Musica.”

Christmas Day in the morning

Handel, Rutter

waiting.christmas It’s Christmas Day. And it’s Saturday. Obviously, it’s time for some more Christmas music.

Let’s start with the probably obvious choice, the first part of the Messiah by Georg Frederick Handel. This is performed by the Dream Orchestra. It was conducted by Daniel Suk on December 3, 2015. I don’t think I’ve linked to this particular version, but I could be wrong. Sometimes, choirs will end this part with Hallelujah, which actually ends Part II, the Easter section; I’m catholic about doing that.

I’ve been in the chorus when this part has been performed in its entirety at least four times. And I’ve been in plenty of choirs that have sung And The Glory Of The Lord, And He Shall Purify, Glory To God In The Highest, and especially For Unto To Us A Child Is Born a bunch of times. I never tire of them.

Noel

The version of Gloria by John Rutter I picked was new to me. This was performed by the Angeles Chorale at the First United Methodist Church in Pasadena, CA, on December 15, 2012. This piece is harder than it seems, I can tell you from having performed it twice. My favorite Rutter piece is the Requiem, but it doesn’t fit this season.

I think I used this before. The Alma College Choirs sing The Dream Isaiah Saw. It’s by composer Glenn Rudolph. Recorded live at the 2011 Festival of Carols on the campus of Alma College in Alma, Michigan. I love singing this song.

Here’s Aubrey Logan singing O Holy Night. It was released only yesterday. Your basic last-minute shopping present.

Finally, the title tune, performed by David Arkenstone. This was NOT exactly what I was looking for. Nor were all the versions of I Saw Three Ships I came across. But it’s like other Christmas gifts; sometimes they are very nice, even when they are not what you were expecting.

Things I don’t want for Christmas

ARA

I suppose I should not be ungracious. Still, there ARE some things I just don’t want for Christmas:

Arguments that the COVID vaccine is contrary to God’s will because we have “natural immunity.”

That the vaccine has a microchip in it, broadcasting to Bill Gates’ new unlisted phone number.

That the vaccine was designed to fail. Or that the disease is fake, planned by the corporatists.

More things I don’t want for Christmas:

“Proof” that climate change has been engineered by a leftwing globalist cabal designed to take our freedom
“Proof” debunking the Holocaust
And “Proof” of Bigfoot’s existence (I just don’t get the Bigfoot stuff)

I bring this up because, in the past year or two, I have received EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE, unsolicited, to my email or via Instant Messaging on Facebook. And there were many more of like persuasion. You can’t just return them to Amazon.

Illusionary superiority

Here’s an interesting article from Scientific American. People Who Jump to Conclusions Show Other Kinds of Thinking Errors. Moreover, “Belief in conspiracy theories and overconfidence are two tendencies linked to hasty thinking.”

There was a fishing experiment you can read about. “The earlier a person jumped, the more likely they were to endorse conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the Apollo moon landings had been faked. Such individuals were also more likely to believe in paranormal phenomena and medical myths, such as the idea that health officials are actively hiding a link between cell phones and cancer.”

The article was by Carmen Sanchez and David Dunning on October 15, 2021. Dunning? I remember that surname from a blog post about illusionary superiority I wrote in September of 2015. The phenomenon is “a cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities, relative to others… Other terms include superiority bias, leniency error… and the Lake Wobegon effect.”

Instead

If you’ve been around here long enough, you know what I really, really want. And no, it’s not the Spice Girls’ greatest hits. (Although I don’t have any Spice Girls music. Should I get some?)

I want YOU to Ask Roger Anything. It could be about Bigfoot or the Holocaust, I suppose, and why I don’t believe in the former but do believe in the latter.

Expect answers to your questions, probably within a month. Please leave your questions, suggestions, and interpolations in the comments section of the blog. OR you can also contact me on Facebook or Twitter. On Twitter, my name is ersie. Why ersie? I’ve probably answered that before, but I could do it again if you ask. Always look for the duck.

You may remain anonymous, or better yet, pseudonymous, but you need to tell me that. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you wish to be unnamed. Otherwise, I’ll attribute the queries to you.