Retiring these Chestnuts

"I get so tired of listening to the Black Eyed Peas. It's rock music for those who don't like rock, rap for those who don't like rap, and pop music for those who don't like music." 

- Robert California, The Office

Often, I feel the same way about Christmas music. Don't get me wrong. I love the festivities. I love much of the happiness. I love the sacred and profane songs that celebrate (or intimate) this time of the year. But there are so many songs that we hear pumped through the loudspeakers and car radios while going about our business (especially if our business consisted of going through retail businesses). So much of the songs and the interpretations of the songs (and the spoofs of those songs, or the novelty songs) are so bad, I just don't want to hear them again. They actually make Christmas a bit less joyous for me.

But I know that I'm not alone in this feeling. So I conducted in an informal survey via Facebook.  Of roughly eighty responses (most people voted for more than one song), these were the Top Tiring Songs of the Christmas Season:

• Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer (17 hits) 
• Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk this Christmas
• Rocking Around the Christmas Tree
• I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus
• Santa Baby
• I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause
• Little Drummer Boy
• Jingle Bell Rock
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
• Happy Holidays
• Christmas Shoes (Edit. Overlooked this purportedly awful song)
• Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire
• 12 Pains of Christmas
• The Little Christmas Stocking with the Hole in the Toe (1 hit)
• Baby It's Cold Outside (ditto)

Now, let's follow that up with two questions.
First: What Christmas or holiday songs aggravate you? You just want to stuff them back into the closet of mediocrity or drown them in the pool of horrible dreams and forget about them. Let their names never be spoken of again.
Second: What Christmas or holiday season songs still send shivers down your spine - in a good way, that is? It could be a song or an album, or a particular version of a song.
An example for me, despite the obvious - Vince Guaraldi's theme music for the Charlie Brown Christmas special - I would have to say is Sufjan Steven's "O Come, O Come Emanuel."

Breakfast with Jesus - WoCIO,IYWI

Yet another in the series titled 

"War on Christmas Is Over, If You Want It"

posted from Bloggeroid

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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I have to wonder if really only one member of the Christmas Sweater Party was in charge of this mission. If the others just kind of go along with her because she's a bit hard to go along with, or because she's such a strong character that they've confused that with leadership.

"Put on these ridiculous, loud sweaters and go on national TV to pretend Jesus cares about a statement going out of vogue? OK, if you say so, I guess."

Regardless, if Jesus were sipping some morning brew with you, what do you think the conversation would revolve around? What do you think would weigh heavily upon his heart?

Interfaithal X-mas - WoCIO,IYWI

DSC02661, a photo by nornnyweb on Flickr.

Sweet Mothra of God! - WoCIO,IYWI

Precious son of God-zilla! Is this what's meant by "War on Christmas"?

h/t to MarkO for this find, via the Christian Left

What's your favorite/worst horrible manger scene?

Part 5 in a series on the War on Christmas.

I Love the Smell of Nutmeg in the Morning - WoCIO,IYWI 4

Part four of a series on the so-called War on Christmas

pt 1, pt 2, pt 3

Not to put too fine a point on it, but why do Christians - the very people who are supposed to follow the Prince of Peace, have such a violence fetish? Why is it that when we feel offense, it becomes a war?

The Culture Wars.
The War on Christmas.
The War on the Unborn.
The War on the Family (which is actually a war by certain Christians against families that don't match up to their definition of family).

Are we even aware of what actual war actually is?



War is murder. War is ravaging. War is destroying everything good. War is rape. War is burning flesh and starving babies and choking on gasses and surviving shrapnel. War is severed limbs and lost friends.

War is something that I severely do not want my daughter to have to face. It is something that I've personally long conscientiously objected to. It's something that I don't wish on my worst enemies.

So I have to ask: In comparing a perceived (but not real*) slight to our religious sensibilities to war, are we trying to trivialize the horribleness of war - and dehumanize the very people affected by it - or are we fetishizing violence to the point of looking for fights where there is none in the hopes of getting our kinks?

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*"Happy Holidays" is an inclusive manner of greeting someone in a pluralistic society during a holy season. Meaning that those that celebrate Christmas are not excluded, but rather others who celebrate another tradition are added and not excluded.

Advent(ures in Waiting) - WoCIOIYWI pt 3

Now they've really done it!! We have proof here:

The War on Christmas Advent Calendars

Third in a series of the "War on Christmas"
Part 1, pt 2, pt 4

The True-ish Meanings of Christmases: WoCIO,IYWI, 2

Note: Second in a series.

Pt. 1, pt 3, pt 4

What is the TRUE meaning of Christmas?

The question is, of course, irrelevant. Christmas started as a pagan ritual that became Christianized. Unlike Easter, there is nothing specifically holy or appropriate about the season or the date. No mythos that connects the birth of the god-man to the beginning of winter, no biblical tradition, no holy connection. Which doesn't keep it from being what one wants it to be, but it is not explicitly a holy season for Christians. Therefore, there is no true reason to argue that "Jesus is the Reason for the Season." Especially since there are other, specifically non-Jesus-y, reasons for the season*.

Earlier this week, a friend and I were discussing my daughter and what she looks forward to - or may look forward to - for the upcoming season. I grumbled something about her expecting Santa (aaargh!) and snow (also, aaarrrgh for us Chicagoans). But then my friends talks brightly and fondly about watching the Christmas classics on TV. And this, oddly enough, flashes my mind with images and emotions related to watching Star Wars (NOT the infamous Holiday Special one) on our black and white telly in the early 80's, pre-VCR. Not to mention Charlie Brown's Christmas classic, or The Grinch, the Christmas Carol with the really freaky Ghost of Christmas to Come in the Joe Black trench coat. Of course, we shan't forget little Ralphie and his Christmas Story.


I cherish and idolize my memories of watching these fantastic stories and their fantastic sets and worlds (early Lucas re-interpreting cheesy sci-fi and Chuck Jones interpreting Charles Schultz and Dr. Seuss, especially. But also Vince Guaraldi, and hilarious word-play like "'Frajily.' It must be Italian."), but especially in the settings where I watched them: with my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my brothers, mom and dad, and grandma. Christmas was for family reunions.

That's what Christmas has meant to me. For my friend, the best part of the season was the fact that her mother relinquished control of her telenovela addiction to allow my friend and her sisters to watch Christmas specials with their only television.

The point being, there is no such thing as the REAL meaning of Christmas. Christmas and the rest of the holidays are as subjective, as meaningless or meaningful as you want them to be.

For me, for now, however, I choose to let the season be more about focusing on what it means that God would submit himself to humanity in the frailest of ways. Not so much Christmas as a supposed holy day, but the notion and contemplation of the birth of Jesus. That, in part, is what this season means. And I'd like to let that influence the rest of me.

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*More on that later. But here's a hint: Credit/Cash/Money/Buy/Spend

War on Christmas Is Over, If You Want It... (pt 1)

First in a series

pt 2, pt 3, pt 4

There's a lot to hate about the so-called War on Christmas. I hate the trolling and looking for fights where there are none. I hate the misplaced anger. I hate the out-of-whack priorities. I hate the violent-centric, bloodlusty name.

There's so much more and I could do a series on it*. Fortunately our friends at The Christian Left introduced us to a blogger calling him(her?)self Fat Pastor, who addressed many of these issues wonderfully three years ago.

If you want to keep Christ in Christmas, worry about things more important than the signs and decorations at JC Penney. You think Christmas should be about Christ? Then take up your cross and follow Jesus – not into department stores, but into the prisons, the hospitals, among the poor and the outcast. You get angry when someone doesn’t say “Christmas?” Try getting angry over Christ’s children dying of malnutrition or AIDS. Try getting angry over the fact that the Christmas chocolate you love so much was kept cheap on the back of the working poor. Try getting angry over the fact that Christians are keeping people out of churches with their closed minds and closed doors.

You want to keep Christ in Christmas? Try putting Christ in your life first. Then we’ll talk about how to greet each other. And if you want a truly Christian greeting, one that makes no mistake whether or not you follow the Christ child, try, “the peace of Christ be with you.”

Eerste Wereldoorlog, gewonden

Question for today:
What do you hate about the "War on Christmas"?

*Nah, I will do a series on it. Next: the True-ish Meanings of Christmases.