Look up a little ditty titled “Police Stopped My Car” and play it for him.
Revenge is sweeeeeeet! 
Well, now you can send 'em to Hallmark. Only there can they buy
“James Taylor: A Christmas Album.” See the list above for many of the included songs.
Oh, and your post woke up my family. 
Well, I can’t admit to liking it, but you have to give props to Bing’s White Christmas for a roll during the fall of Saigon circa 1975.
Oh, god, no…
I used to like Mannheim Steamroller, back when I first heard their first Christmas album, but then I started noticing a certain lack of…something or other. After a while (and after becoming a music major), I realized that these songs were very mechanical sounding. Almost lifeless, to my ears. Every note, every sound was very precise, as if it were all played by machines, instead of just some of it played by machines.
I remember reading various liner notes, where Chip Davis styled himself as a classically trained, expert musician, well versed in music history (after all, he picked out the name "Mannheim Steamroller, right?). But he wrote of suddenly coming upon the idea of doing “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” but translating it into Latin, to make it sound all Gregorian chant-like. Thus, he was utterly surprised to learn that in fact, “O Come O Come Emmanuel” was originally “Veni Emmanuel,” a 12th century Latin hymn based on Gregorian chant. Funny, I learned about that in my first semester of music history…
Then, around my junior year at St. Olaf College, I went with a group of people to a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Concert in the Twin Cities. I was hoping that the live versions of their songs would have that certain spark that was missing from their studio albums.
Boy, was I disappointed.
So much of their “live” performance was pre-recorded tracks that if I closed my eyes, it would have been just like sitting in my dorm room listening to the CD. Mr. Davis even bragged about it in the program notes, saying that he had “invented” a system to keep the live performers (three of them, if I recall correctly) synchronized with the pre-recorded stuff. It involved listening to a “click track” through headphones while they were playing. He proudly said that no other musical performers used such a system. Funny…most concert videos that I had seen showed lots of people using a similar system. Furthermore, while most other live acts had unobtrusive, flesh-toned earpieces, the Steamroller used these early-80’s styled huge black headsets.
Their performance was so strictly timed, they were able to play a song synchronized to a film of some dancer struggling to jump over a box horse. It came off as really lifelessly mechanical.
Since then, I haven’t even had the urge to listen to the one or two Mannheim Steamroller CDs that I had.
To be fair, though, the one or two songs that they played on medieval instruments, with no electronics or pre-recorded tracks, were quite lively. And, I’ve been in a choir that performed some versions of Christmas carols arranged by Jackson Berkey, keyboardist and arranger for the Steamroller, and those were a lot of fun to do. All sorts of funky rhythms. Maybe it’s just the synthesizer stuff (or Chip Davis’ inflated opinion of himself) that rubs me the wrong way…
Well, put me in jail then. I’d always wanted to know what the people who created Muzak looked like. Then I saw them on TV back in the 80’s.
The worst christmas song ever has to be “last christmas” by Wham. If there was ever a song that would drive me into a homicidal rage, that’s the one. The worst part is, the crap rock station my mom insists on listening to plays it all. year. long.
And I’ll second the complete and utter obliteration of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
I’d rather be covered with weeping sores than hear Paul McCartney’s **“Wonderful Christmastime.” ** The opening in particular – *doink doink doink doink DOINK DOINK DOINK DOINK * – is aural punishment sans equal.
I know it’s totally, totally not funny, but the post about someone’s grandmother dying the year that “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” came out has me in tears so bad I can hardly type this. I truly love most Christmas music but all of the complaints on this thread are well grounded - it is certainly a form that’s been abused, but the workplaces who subject their employees to repeating loops of anything are the real culprits who should be taken out and shot.
The song that always drove my kids to threaten me with bodily harm was Weird Al Yankovic’s “Christmas at Ground Zero” (“What a fluke/we’re gonna get nuked/on this jolly holl-i-day”). Now I’m going to have to give this serious thought to come up with my most hated Christmas tunes. “Twelve Days of Christmas” would be one, both the straight and the joke versions (although the Allan Sherman version is less intolerable than the others). “Jingle Bells” is a song, like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” that no serious musician should ever be tempted to record.
This year’s James Taylor Christmas disc released by Hallmark is even bad, shockingly so since you could imagine James singing just about anything and it being good. The fifties pairings pretty much covered the “Baby It’s Cold Outside” base and all other versions are verging on creepy. Marily Monroe or somebody like her is the only one who ever needed to record “Santa Baby” and all the modern versions creep me out.
Hazel-rah’s posts, both the original inspiration and the later post above are great - I wish I could write/rant like that.
Someone mentioned “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” and I’ve got to say that Yogi Yorgesson tune is one of my all time favorites, and my above proviso notwithstanding, I even love his b-side rendering of “Yingle Bells”.
Ho Ho Ho.
We sang the “Carol of the Bells” in Choir this year. In its original Russian. It annoys me that people don’t know this is a Russian song, even though I didn’t know that until this year, either. I realize that’s very hypocritical. But instrumental versions of the song (which all you ever hear, it seems) suck.
I loathe, loathe with all the hatred of hell, all the red-hot malice of Satan himself all Christmas music except for the religious songs. I have yet to hear a secular Christmas song that doesn’t boil my blood.
The religious songs are usually just mediocre, and a little annoying (Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Joy To The World, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, etc.) but they don’t inspire in me hate and loathing. At least they have something to do with the actual holiday.
I do like the Latin songs though, (Adeste Fideles, Angels We Have Heard on High, I can’t think of any others), because Latin is such a cool language that everything written in it automatically becomes good. 
Amen brother.
I insulate myself from most “new” Christmas music. I’m quite old-fashioned. I like my Christmas music to be old, and preferably in a Classical style (as in Robert Shaw Chorale, or Kathleen Battle). (I bought some Christmas CDs by both of them this year, by the way. Fabulous!) Right now I’m listening to the complete (as in complete) Handel’s Messiah right now on my iTunes playlist. That’s the kind of thing I like.
I also have a definite bias towards religious-themed Christmas music, but old traditional favorites like “Jingle Bells” are fine too.
If I had to choose a Christmas song I’d rather avoid, I guess it would be “I’ll be Home For Christmas.” Bleh. Boring. I don’t hate it, but I would not voluntarily listen to it.
WWSW-FM, a ClearChannel station, plays holiday music continuously from Thanksgiving through New Years. So far, so good. The problem is that every time I turn on the radio they seem to be playing
I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas sung by Gayla Peevey
or a breathless double-time version of Jingle Bells by Judy Garland or Snoopy’s Christmas by The Royal Guardsmen. Any of these is enough to make me want to ram chopsticks through my eardrums and into my brain.
The only right way to listen to Sleigh Ride is the instrumental way, the way Leroy Anderson intended it. I hope Mitchell Parish is burning someway in the inner circles of hell for mucking up a perfectly good song by adding really dumb lyrics to it.
<incredibly gay>I do believe that’s by that OTHER fabulous diva Barbra Streisand, actually… </incredibly gay>
I had the misfortune of hearing some version of “santa baby” on the local easy-listening station…
dear OG i couldn’t imagine a much worse song, pathetic whiny singing trying to be seductive, syrupy sweet instrumental accompaniment, disgustingly sappy and saccharine…
i felt like driving a drill bit through my ears just to stop it…
oh no, i’m hearing it in my mind now…where’s my shotgun, that oughta stop it…
The kid poisoned her, of course, and that’s why he’s cheerful. Maybe he’s even planning to put the last dose of poison in those new shoes, to finish her off.
I love Christmas carols…except…
I just heard “Jingle Bell Rock” on the radio recently, and the thought struck me: was there ever a time in our musical history that we were so benighted, that we thought this song actually, you know, rocked?
And there’s another song – it may be the worst Christmas song ever, but it’s too obscure to actually hate it.
Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, “We’ve Got That Holiday Feeling”.
It’s a conversation between the two (in the manner of “Baby It’s Cold Outside”). Eydie’s lines extol the wonders of the season…Steve’s are all attempts to get in her pants.
E: Look how the snow is blowing…
S: Your eyes are softly glowing…
Ewwww.
I sang in a choir for five years. Rehearsals for the Christmas show start in September. A million times, sing “Sleigh Ride,” “Carol of the Bells,” “White Christmas,” et. al. It’s a miracle I’m relatively sane.
But for sheer, skin-crawling serious hate, I have to vote for McCartney’s chirpy “Having a Wonderful Christmastime,” or whateverthehell that song is called. He should be ashamed of writing that piece of aural nightmare.
The Snoopy-Red Baron song will send me screaming from the room. Really.
“Do They Know it’s Christmas” struck me as being a horrible song for a good cause.
Oh, come on; you can’t honestly mean that. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the clear, bell-like voices of Yuletide carolers calling out: “Achtung! Jetzt wir singen zusammen die Geschichte uber dem schweinkomischen Hund und dem lieben Red Baron!..”