I’m with PeanutHead, 12 days of Christmas . I think a service to humanity would be to invent a time machine and go back in time and prevent this song from having ever been written. Then we wouldn’t have all of the mindless spinoffs.
However, a close second is Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
There’s a rarely-played Bing Crosby song called “How Lovely Is Christmas”. It was on a children’s Christmas album I had when I was a kid (still have the album!) and that song is one of the most gorgeous holiday tunes I can think of.
Best one is, without a doubt, “Happy Christmas/War Is Over” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Chuck Berry’s “Run, Run Rudolph” is pretty cool as well, especially the live versions by the Grateful Dead from their 1971 Ann Arbor, Michigan concerts.
** We Need a Little Christmas ** is the best, if it’s sung right and has all the verses. Also a little known Irving Berlin song called ** The Happy New Year Blues ** is excellent. Both on the CD “A Broadway Christmas.”
Gee, if 12 Days of Xmas had never been written, then we’d never have ** The 12 Days of Phantom **. Which I love. Or the Muppets version of the song, which is great. Ba-drumpa-bum-bop.
Best: “Tennessee Christmas” as sung by Amy Grant on her first Christmas Album (yes, she’s had two.)
Worst: (tie) “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer,” and “Jingle Bells,” when it’s done by barking dogs. Both are hackneyed, one-joke tunes that should’ve been forgotten by Dec. 26 the year they were written, but instead are played endlessly every year in my neck o’ the woods.
Funniest: “Walking Round in Women’s Underwear” to the tune of “Walkin’ In A Winter Wonderland”
sample lyric:
*In the store – there’s a teddy,
Little straps – like spaghetti,
It holds me so tight,
Like handcuffs at night,
Walkin’ 'round in women’s underwear.
In the office there’s a guy named Melvin,
He pretends that I am Murphy Brown.
He’ll say, “Are you ready?” I’ll say,“Whoa, Man!”
“Let’s wait until our wives are out of town!”
*
Did you know that Irving Berlin’s original first verse is usually not sung?
Additional info about the Guinness record holding* single can be found in the December issue of Reader’s Digest.
*Best-selling single of all time. Elton John’s tribute to Princess Di also held the #1 spot but White Christmas has regained its stature.
Best: Off the Phil Spector Christmas Album, Winter Wonderland, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Thos are the only versions of those songs I can stand.
Also, Christmas Rapping by the Waitresses, I think. It’s the one about going to the store to get cranberries.
And the entire “It’s Christmas Charlie Brown” soundtrack by Vince Guiraldi.
The worst and most bizarre Christmas song of all time? It’s not even close: Tiny Tim’s “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year.”
I heard him sing this one on Howard Stern’s show not long before he died… and I while I knew Tiny Tim was a genuine weirdo, I had no idea he was so hopelessly out to lunch.
The guy didn’t seem malicious- just really STUPID! I don’t THINK he intended the song as a joke, either. I think he honestly believed he was making some sort of social commentary by giving Santa Claus AIDS… but the lyrics make it clear that Tiny didn’t grasp the nature of AIDS in the least. His lyrics made it sound like AIDS was a bad cold that Santa would get over in a few months… so don’t worry kiddies, Sanata will be back, good as new, next year.
This is just one of those songs that’s so bad, you WANT to laugh (a la MST3K), only it’s so sick, so wrong-headed, you CAN’T laugh. You can’t do much except sit there in a stupor, wondering, “What the heck could he POSSIBLY have been thinking?”
Just remembered something I saw over the weekend, it was an Oak Ridge Boys concert titled “An Inconvenient Chrsistmas”. The fact that it was recorded in Branson should have been a tipoff. Yeesh, what dreck! If it hadn’t been for the interminable pleas for $14* to feed starving American children I would have kept watching just for the amusement value (e.g.: the audience cheering every time Richard had a solo. WTF?) but instead I changed the channel after 15 minutes.
*a $14 donation buys 100 pounds of food? Exactly how does that work? 100 pounds of what, canned beans? And how much of that $14 goes toward overhead?
I have a soft spot in my heart for “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. for some reason my glurge-rejection system totally fails on this one, even though it definitelly qualifies.
For traditional songs, I like a lot of the ones mentioned. For novelty songs, I always enjoy “Blue Christmas” by Porky Pig and, although I’m not a South Park fan in general, I love Cartman singing “O Holy Night”.