Listening to the glurgy Xmas songs all day long at my job is making me replace the sweetness with not very kosher lyrics.
Please suggest off beat, fun, peppy songs to keep me from getting stabby.
Thanks.
Father Christmas - The Kinks
I’ll never pass up a chance to recommend the Carols for a Cure series. Every one of them features a few non-traditional Xmas songs, sung by Broadway casts. 2001 features “A Full Frontal Christmas” by the Full Monty and “Davy Dinkle” by Urinetown, a tale of a lad who likes to pee in the snow and saves Christmas. And wouldn’t I love to animate that story.
They are superb and for a wondeful cause.
I am planning on winning the lottery this weekend and have had your Xmas CD’s on my docket to buy for alot of years. Why does Christmas come when I am so broke?
Well the obvious is The Pogues with Fairytale of New York. I mean, with lyrics like “You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot” how can you go wrong!
The Twelve Days of Christmas by The Yods is entertaining, but hard to find (On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a vibrator with a battery).
Also try Red Peters’ Holy Shit it’s Christmas.
If you can afford one, I’d recommend 2005, featuring Avenue Q’s "Drinking Our Way Through the Holidays (You can merrily/watch them light the tree/if you’re already lit) and "Something Must Be Wrong with My Mistletoe:
I went to every service, sang every lousy hymn.
Played Mary in the pageant cause my love life’s just as grim.
Made passes at the pastor, but it ended up the same:
On Christmas Day I’ve no organ to play and I know what’s to blame.
I asked a similar question last year, and got a million fantastic suggestions (for which I am still grateful). Perhaps that threadwill prove as helpful for you.
This one tells Christmas the way it really is.
One of my favorite Christmas CDs is “A Santa Cause: It’s a Punk Rock Christmas”. It has such wonders as Christmas Night of Zombies and I saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus and I highly recommend it although the sequel wasn’t nearly as good. “Oi to the World” is also another good choice with one of my favorite carols to break out at family gatherings; Christmas Time for my Penis.
"Christmas Wrapping, " by The Waitresses is my favorite!
Santa Claus and His Old Lady by Cheech and Chong sometimes makes the rounds on the classic rock stations.
Not a song so much as one of the duo’s routines, it gets radio airplay and it’s amusing. Not a laugh-out-loud show stopper but worth a listen.
The Boxmasters (Billy Bob Thornton’s band) has a great song about how awful Christmas is with one’s horrible family called “Slower Than Christmas.”
“The 12 Days After Christmas” is a funny antidote to the original. A YouTube search will result in any number of high school choirs singing it.
One of my favs that hardly gets any radio play in December, even on country stations, is “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Vince Vance and the Valiants, with Lisa Layne on vocals. (Not the same as Mariah Carey’s song with the same title.)
Tim Hockenberry’s “Christmas By the Bay” is damn good.
That’s what I came in to mention, though the version I’ve heard is by a female singer, don’t know who.
I’d also recommend “Donde Este Santa Claus” by Guster.
You beat me to it.
Another irreverent holiday tune:
We Three Kings by Mojo Nixon
Nice sentiment, in an updated punk song:
My faves of the fun and peppy type Christmas songs -
They Might Be Giants - Santa’s Beard
Fountains of Wayne - I Want an Alien for Christmas and The Man in the Santa Suit
Squirrel Nut Zippers - Carolina Christmas
The Crystals - Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
Merle Haggard - Santa Claus and Popcorn
Soul Coughing - Suzy Snowflake
Badly Drawn Boy - Donna and Blitzen
Forget the secular carols, which are at best glurge and at worst grossly offensive in their bland cheesiness. Go for the outright religious carols, which, even if you aren’t a religious person, are musically beautiful and, at least for the brighter ones, cheering. (There is a class of carol in which the subject matter is a real downer - the Coventry Carol is an example.)
My gripe with the secular carols isn’t that they are secular - it’s that they suck.
Do you like the Cthulhu mythos? If so, theseare fun. 
My perennial recommendation is Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration.
It never fails to lift me up.
“Walking 'Round In Women’s Underwear” is my favourite Christmas song. Ah, listening to it, now I’m finally in a Christmas mood!
Then there’s Jon Lajoie’s "Cold-Blooded Christmas - I think this is Jim’s current favourite Christmas song, although I think he still has a soft spot in his heart for Weird Al’s "Christmas at Ground Zero.