That’s why I pep it up with a little mayhem.
That’s what the wrists are for!
I sang in my high school choir as a bass/baritone. Four years of “prum, pum, puddly pum” was enough.
That’s one of my top three hated songs of all time. All time, not just Christmastime.
The others are Proud To Be An American by Lee Greenwood and Red Red Whine by UB40. (That’s an intentional typo, BTW.)
I heard what sounded like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing “Silver Bells” in Walgreens yesterday. 
Actually, their version wasn’t all that bad, though I would have preferred the less traditional “Don’t Fence Me In”.
Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze*
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in.
Some of our local TV stations feature high school choirs performing Christmas songs on their morning news programs. They’ve been doing that for several weeks now. The videos all look like they were shot by whoever the school had handy to run the camera, they are very poorly done. On top of that, about 90% of the singers are sadly out of tune. As a former TV news person and a singer myself I can’t bring myself to watch. I have to turn the TV off.
Relevant On the Fastrack strip today:
Try being a musician right now. Today will be my eighth performance this month to play Christmas music. (Could be worse)
The upside is that most of the groups have been pretty good, with unusual spins on the music. One was a brass quintet playing jazz arrangements of christmas music and the other was two performances of my all tuba group. The not-so-great one was three shows from a community choir. Well meaning, but hoo boy, some clinkers.
Hey- don’t judge me. I gotta buy groceries.
On the contrary, I salute you for bringing joy to people in a trying season!
I am listening to Steeleye Span, Golden Bough, Broken Peach and The Roaches on Pandora this Christmas season.
In my younger, retail-working days, I’d tell my employers that I was Jewish, and that I felt ostracized around this time of year because I had to listen to 8 hours of music about a holiday that I don’t celebrate. It actually worked once, and they played almost no Christmas music that year.
As I got older, I felt bad about appropriating someone else’s culture just to prevent me from hearing The Little Drummer Boy (especially the Bob Seger version, which was my mother’s favorite), so I learned to tune it out, mostly.
There are a few, more obscure ones that I enjoy. I like Christmas Wrapping, though I prefer the Kylie Minogue version. I’m kind of addicted to the 1948 Peggy Lee version of Papa Noel, even though, when watching the linked lyric video, I still have no idea what the hell she’s talking about.
Every year there is this thread, and every year I have to come in here and defend the Little Drummer Boy. He’s a poor kid with nothing to give the newborn king, so what does he do? He plays a song from his heart. He gives Jesus art.
Sob
I, for one, would quite like to hear an all tuba group playing the Little Drummer Boy
I don’t have a problem with the message. I just hate the song about it. We never really hear the tune he was drumming. It’s like The Monster Mash in that it’s a song about a song that we never hear.
It’s the Tennessee Waltz- of Christmas carols.
Ah yes, The Little Tuba Boy
I played my horn for him
Pa ruba ru-ba
I played my best for him
Pa ruba ru-ba,
Ruba ru-ba,
Ruba ru-ba
Then he smiled at me
Pa ruba ru-ba
Me and my tuba
But, damn, couldn’t he play the flute?
.
There’s an apocryphal tale that Mary turned to the drummer boy and asked him, beatifically, whether he knew something less boring… "Knowest thou Wipeout?"
Once I went into FAO Schwartz (the famous toy store) just before Christmas. The cutesy Christmas music was deafening. I asked one of the clerks how he bore it and he said, “you just don’t hear it after awhile.”
This year there’s a lot of memes about Mary getting real fed up with him. “I just put Jesus down for a nap and then YOU show up”.
I do think I might be more favorably disposed toward that song if I were to hear a speed metal band doing their version of it.