"You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch, with a nauseous super 'naus.' You're a crooked, dirty jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mr. Grinch. You're a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce."*

           It occurred to me today when Mannheim Steamroller came on the radio (doing some god-awful version of “Deck the Halls” that sounded like space disco) that I really hate Christmas music. Not just the utterly bad Christmas music like that shitty Paul McCartney Christmas song or ANYTHING by Mannheim Steamroller (nice name, by the way. I’m sorry, they just make me so mad! Do people pay to listen that crap?). All Christmas music.

            That tends to make the month of December kind of tricky because not only is every store playing Christmas music nonstop, but some radio stations have forsaken all of their regular programming in favor of horrible renditions of “classic” Christmas tunes. Today I heard what sounded like a six-year-old girl covering “Last Christmas” by Wham!, one of the few respectable Christmas songs ever written (okay, I have a soft spot for George Michael). And I thought to myself, “Why? Why take one of the only semi-decent, almost tolerable Christmas songs and bastardize it by having someone who is clearly underage singing about lovers and kissing? Ew.

            I’ve compiled a list of other songs from Christmas time that suck:

1. Jingle Bells. (Dumb.)

2. Baby, It’s Cold Outside. (A song about pedophilia? You be the judge.)

3. Frosty the Snowman. (Dumb.)

4. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (Dumb.)

5. Winter Wonderland. (Sets up unrealistic expectations of what Christmas should entail.)

6. Do You Hear What I Hear? (This one will never get out of your head. And if you’re anything like me, you don’t know the lyrics and keep repeating the title line over and over all day.)

7.  Feliz Navidad. (See number six but worse, because you don’t know the lyrics AND you don’t speak Spanish.)

8.  I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. (Perverted.)

9.  Santa Baby. (See number eight.)

10.The Twelve Days of Christmas. (This song makes me extremely anxious.)

11. Up on the Rooftop. (Dumb.)

12. We Wish You a Merry Christmas. (So repetitive, I could have written it.)

Curvy Mr. Grinch.

            I lied before, however, about hating ALL Christmas music. If it was in a famous musical, I probably like it. For instance I like “White Christmas”, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” anything from A Charlie Brown Christmas and that song about Mr. Grinch. Also acceptable is John Lennon’s Happy X-mas (War is Over) as he was a brilliant human being with whom I have a massive, long-time imaginary relationship. Oh, and the song is politically conscious (kind of).

White Christmas.

          

Esther sings to Tootie in Meet Me In St. Louis.

           In the meantime, I’ll be rocking out my headphones through the holiday season. And if someone manages to pickpocket me and steal my Christmas purchases because my normally superhuman hearing skills are hampered by my headphones, I’ll have a new reason to loathe Christmas music. Win-win.

*The quote is from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

P.S. I just found out that it was Taylor Swift singing the Wham! cover.