Hark, how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say, throw cares away, Christmas is here, da da, duh duh…
I have a lovely singing voice. Please, no throwing of money or underpants.
I bring my dulcetness up only because I’ve started to hear Christmas carols everywhere I go and, as always, Christmas carols confound me. I love them, don’t get me wrong. Who among us doesn’t enjoy singing about roasting nuts and zombie snowmen?
The problem is that I’ve been singing these Christmas classics a certain way my whole life, and now the Internet and other unreliable sources tell me that I’ve been singing them wrong. Dead wrong, little mister, and no ribbon candy for you.
For example, “Carol of the Bells,” as sung in such angelic tones above. Since I was a toddling lad who still believed in Santa and other superheroes, I’ve been singing it a certain way. I do so in the car sometimes and invariably my passenger (sometimes my wife, sometimes a mysterious hitchhiker in a prom dress) will look at me funny and say, “What? What the hell did you just say?”
I thought it went: “On come the bells, sweet silver bells, songs seem to sing, ding, ding-a-ling. All seem to say, no, there’s no hay, Christmas is here, bring me a beer, too young to know, you’ll never bowl, to the dog pound, raising a hound…”
And on and on through the song, entire verses of apparently wrong lyrics. Way wrong, they tell me.
I never thought “Winter Wonderland” featured lines about women’s underwear, but I didn’t have the lyrics to that one quite right, either.
For instance: “In the middle we can build a snowman, and pretend that he is partly drowned…”
I also thought a later line offered: “Later on we’ll count spiders, as we drink by the fire, to face unafraid, the plants that we made…”
And so on. I wasn’t a bright child and I never got more brighter.
I used to sing (and still do when no one’s listening) “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you slide mice late tonight.”
And: “You better not pout, you better cry, you better not spout Aunt Ellen’s new wine.”
Not to mention: “Deck the halls with balls of Wally…” and “throw the ancient two-eyed Carol.”
Plus: “Good King Wence’s car backed out, on the feet of Steven.”
And the slightly lurid: “Get dressed ye married gentlemen, let nothing Judith may…”
I always thought Frosty was described in gratuitous anatomical detail, as illustrated by the line: “… with a corncob pipe and a butt and nose…”
I always believed the days of Christmas featured 10 lawyers leaving, seven warts on women and six geezers laying. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I love Christmas songs, whether their words paint pictures of baby Jesus, animated snow people or octogenarians getting run over by hoofed mammals. Good Christmas music is all about mood, anyway. Who really cares if it’s “deck the halls with bows of holly” or “deck the halls with Buddy Holly?” If it gets you in a holiday groove, it’s all good. A nice piece of Christmas music can transport even an old man back to his youth; back to better times before the holiday turned into the commercial beast it’s become.
And then Paul McCartney’s horrific “Wonderful Christmastime” comes on the radio for the 14th time that day and it occurs to you that you’d rather have tinsel stuffed in your ears and set on fire than listen to one more note of that terrible, terrible song.
Not to mention Band Aid’s well-intentioned “Do They Know it’s Christmas?”
And Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus.”
Plus Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” “Jingle Dogs,” and (I’m not making this one up) “Daddy, Please Don’t Get Drunk for Christmas.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
