The season of scrooge: christmas songs you love to hate

[nice hat dude!]

Miss Lizzie as Moderator of this Forum please feel free to delete my last post as you deem necessary.I don't feel that I was out of line but some may differ from this opinion,as I've mentioned on a few posts it has never been my intention to offend or to cause discord among my fellow loungers.
Sincerely Bob Kirschman

 

[this one guy]

During the holiday season it seems like all the radio stations around here play is Feliz Navidad, Jingle Bell Rock and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree as if those were the only Christmas songs ever written. :eusa_doh:

So it sounds like over-marketing is the real culprit. I can get sick of anything if it permeates my consciousness incessantly enough, from Christmas songs to baseball teams.
I kind of like Feliz Navidad, but I only hear it once or twice throughout the entire season in my neck of the woods.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can't imagine what political correctness has to do with it (but then that's a term that is all but meaningless, in my opinion), but there's nothing new about popular artists favoring songs that celebrate the secular side of Christmas over sacred ones.

The best performers could do both -- Bing's version of "Adeste Fidelis" was one of radio's most important Christmas traditions thruout the Era, a song he was even more identified with than "White Christmas."

I don't think of "winter" songs like "Winter Wonderland," "It's Winter Again," "Let It Snow" or even "Jingle Bells" as "Christmas" songs, and in the Era they weren't necessarily viewed as such either. I think that identification didn't really solidify until the rise of "format" radio in the fifties as part of the whole "seasonal playlist" idea.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I don't agree with it but I do get the seasonal playlist thing but at what point did they narrow it down to just three songs played almost continuously every ten minutes???

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's a matter of reducing the pool of songs to ones least likely to offend anyone who might complain -- so you get the bland, noncommittal sentiments expressed in those three songs over anything overtly religious or aggressively secular.

I loathe the idea of "Christmas music" being played from right after Veterans' Day all the way thru to New Years no matter what it is. Madame Schumann Heink would sing "Stille Nacht" exactly once each year -- at midnight on Christmas Eve, and if you weren't tuned in, you missed it. Likewise, Bing would sing "Adeste Fidelis" exactly once each year -- as the closing number on the Kraft Music Hall airing closest to Christmas Eve, and then not again till the following year. I'd much rather have a situation like that than a constant drumming of the stuff for six whole weeks. It'd make a Scrooge out of anybody.

 

[ButteMT61]

Miss Lizzie as Moderator of this Forum please feel free to delete my last post as you deem necessary.I don't feel that I was out of line but some may differ from this opinion,as I've mentioned on a few posts it has never been my intention to offend or to cause discord among my fellow loungers.Sincerely Bob Kirschman

What??? Nothing offensive here at all! It's quite enlightening, and I think many hit the nail on the head.In thinking, I have to concur - Hippo for Xmas IS the most irritating d@rn song ever. Xmas or not! Keep it going...good thread IMHO!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

As for Christmas music... "hippopotamus for Christmas" is with out a doubt the single most irritating Christmas song there is. It manages to turn my stomach.

Equally irritating is All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. Can't believe I actually liked it when I was a kid.

 

[this one guy]

Variety would make extended periods of Christmas music more bearable, and really, tightrope walking the line between religious and secular music to not offend anyone does start to sound like "political correctness", which I dislike as much as Nice Hat Dude! does.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've also noticed that since broadcasters seem to define "Oldies" as the '60s to the '80s, you rarely hear anything older than that except during the holiday season.