Opinion: Odd Christmas songs that give me all the feels
Every Christmas season, when holiday music fills my ears, I’m reminded that some of the oddest of Christmas songs are also some of the best Christmas songs.
I stress the word “some,” here. I’m not a huge fan of Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” which stretches 19 total words over three whole minutes. I flat-out refuse to listen to Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime.” How any member of the Beatles could subject the music-consuming world to that, I’ll never know.
But some of the quirkiest songs out there are indeed among the best.
Guy gets frisky in a big sledHowever popular it’s been for however long, I submit that “Jingle Bells” is truly an odd Christmas song — partly because there’s no actual mention of Christmas in this song about a young man frolicking with a young lady in a horse-drawn winter vehicle. A couple stanzas in, the lyrics even get a little racy — for its time at least:
“A day or two ago,
“I thought I’d take a ride,
“And soon Miss Fanny Bright,
“Was seated at my side!”
Those lyrics would have been considered a bit objectionable by some in 1850, when the song was first written and when single young ladies were rarely courted without a chaperone. Perhaps then it’s no surprise that “Jingle Bells” is also rumored to have been a drinking song.
A holiday favorite for over a century and a half, its many improved versions have surely contributed to its staying power. The first Christmas song I ever remember hearing as a young child is Bing Crosby’s recording of “Jingle Bells” featuring The Andrews Sisters. It was years before I realized that their marvelous rendition was considered B-side material on the 1955 rerelease of his classic Christmas album. But thanks to Bing, it was also years before I realized that the song “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” does not end with the lyrics, “You mean the big fat man with the long white beard … HE’S COMIN’ TO TOWN!”
Not every version of “Jingle Bells” is delightful. No one actually enjoys the version performed by barking dogs. My parents recall a synthesized version on a music player inside a teddy bear I received as a toddler at Christmas 1985. Delighted with my gift, 18-month-old me had figured out that every time I squeezed one of the teddy’s paws, a new song would play. That year, for the entirety of our two-hour drive home, my parents were subjected to “Jingle Bells” on repeat, separated only by a series of discordant notes as I squeezed the teddy’s paw repeatedly to fast-forward through the other songs. That teddy bear lasted 20 years. In hindsight, I’m surprised it lasted past that car ride.
Cartoon dog spared by enemy fighter pilotIt was the catchy melody of the chorus in “Snoopy’s Christmas” that first charmed me. It still perplexes me how anyone could fathom a fictional dog — yes, that Snoopy, created by legendary cartoonist Charles Schulz — as a fighter pilot, but the idea spawned several songs, first recorded in 1967 by an American ensemble called The Royal Guardsmen. In the Christmas-themed song, Snoopy is called upon by Allied Command during World War 1 to take on Germany’s fearsome Red Baron in an aerial dogfight on Christmas Eve.
Unlike Snoopy, the Red Baron was real. Named Manfred von Richthofen, he was an actual baron among Prussian nobility. Though he was killed in battle in April 1918, he was the top-scoring ace fighter pilot of the whole war, earning both his reputation and his nickname in his Albatros D. III, which he painted red.
In the song, Snoopy finds himself facing certain defeat as ice forms on the wings of his fighter plane and the Red Baron pulls up to shoot. “Why he didn’t shoot, well, we’ll never know,” The Royal Guardsmen sing, “Or was it the bells from the village below?”
The Red Baron then forces Snoopy to land deep behind enemy lines. But instead of destroying his foe, he calls out a friendly Christmas greeting and offers a holiday toast, which Snoopy salutes in return. Their exchange of goodwill is but the work of a moment as both fly off, “each knowing they'd meet on some other day.”
Some (incorrectly) describe “Snoopy’s Christmas” as a reference to the WW1 Christmas Truce of 1914, when many combatants on the Western Front paused fighting for a day and a half to socialize in no man’s land and even exchange gifts. Claims of the truce itself have been questioned in the past, as the truce was not officially observed by either the Allied or Central Powers.
Though undoubtedly “mythologised,” (sic) as the British Imperial War Museum puts it, accounts printed at the time in both British and German newspapers and photographs of enemy soldiers posing together support (and sometimes confirm) stories of a seeming truce between hundreds of enemy soldiers who ended up celebrating the Christmas holiday together.
Both sides had assumed they would be victorious by then. German Kaiser Wilhelm II even told some soldiers earlier that year that they would “be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.”
Instead, the war dragged on for almost another four years, with no truce of the same magnitude happening after 1914. The Red Baron is not known to have participated in any Christmas truce, including in 1914, when he was still a cavalryman in the trenches.
It’s little wonder, though, that the events of Christmas 1914 on the Western Front are a subject of such lore. What better embodies the biblical spirit of peace on earth and good will toward men than belligerents in battle laying down their weapons to exchange pleasantries — or, in the Red Baron and Snoopy’s tale, at least — to set free the enemy one was supposed to kill?
Unwashed boy entertains divine kingIf the lyrics of any song could thaw my icy heart, it would be those of “The Little Drummer Boy,” believed to be written by a piano teacher and songwriter in 1941 as “The Carol of the Drum” before it was renamed and popularized by choir leader Harry Simeone in 1958. Those lyrics tell a story good enough to get away with ending five out of every six lines with “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum”:
After seeing his star in the sky, men (commonly known as the Magi) come from the East to Beth-lehem to worship their newborn savior and invite a little boy to come along. The Magi have some pretty schmancy gifts to lay before the feeding trough that holds the tiny baby king, but the little boy has only his drum. So he explains to Baby Jesu: “I am a poor boy, too.”
“Too.” A single word reminds even the most penniless Christians that their savior entered the world as one of them.
The little boy offers the baby king the only thing he can: to play for Him. Mary, the Virgin Mother, has presumably just given birth to the sound of livestock lowing and bleating in the background (though the Bible doesn’t actually mention animals being present at the birth of Jesus.) Relatively speaking, a drum solo probably doesn’t seem that ridiculous, and she nods her OK.
“I played my drum for Him,” says the little boy, aided with tempo by an ox and a lamb that may or may not have actually been there. The magnitude of the moment isn’t lost: “I played my best for Him.”
As it concludes, the humble performance from the unwashed boy elicits what the fancy gifts did not. The newborn savior, swaddled and peaceful, looks over at the boy — and smiles at him.
That’s a wrap on anthology of odd Christmas songs. Merry Christmas to Gazette readers from your humble and odd columnist. Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.
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