Pen-Elayne on the Web

I Hear People Singing, It Must Be Christmastime

Robin's just finished the rough of the art on our 2002 holiday card - yeah, we're a bit behind in sending 'em out, but I figure as long as folks get 'em by the New Year it'll be okay. (This is the same logic that says I can send out Jewish New Year cards after Rosh Hashanah, as long as folks get 'em by Yom Kippur. Thanks Mom!) So as inspiration he's been putting on the Christmas songs. As I've mentioned before, I didn't do Christmas as a kid because duh, I grew up Jewish. But as I got older and aspects of the season became more and more secularized, I sort of adopted an "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" sort of attitude. Besides, what's so funny about peace, love and understanding? So during my first marriage, my personal rituals grew to encompass collecting the Rankin/Bass and other holiday cartoons by videotaping them off the TV when they came 'round, as well as our annual reading of Dickens "A Christmas Carol," about which I've also blogged earlier. (If you want to do the same, as I mentioned in that entry and which I'd highly recommend, you can check out this website for the full text.) But while Robin has a certain limited patience for my cooing "Oh cool, the Alistair Sim version is on!", he doesn't want to know from the animated Rudolph and Hermie - his interests lie more in the audio realm.

So it is I've found myself treated to Christmas songs I'd never heard before, or never really paid attention to, when I was younger. I know most of the sacred ones from having been in a college choral group, where you can't really escape them no matter how loud you protest (I'm my mother's daughter; back in the '60s she spearheaded successful efforts to open up my elementary school holiday singalong program to more than the Christian POV), and of course the rock-oriented ones from them being on the radio back when I was a voracious listener (roughly the '70s through the mid-'80s). But there are a lot of obscure, eclectic and/or British ones I didn't know until Robin started playing them, and now they're among my favorites. For instance, he's currently playing something by Tori Amos (or as he says, "Neil Gaiman's friend") that I'm sure he's played before but I forget from year to year. I think I might have known songs like 2000 Miles before but didn't really pay attention to their beauty as much before the Annual Change of Rotation as Robin reshuffles and reprograms the CD players every Christmas, queueing up the 20+ compilations in his collection.

And this year Skippy (link at left bar) is holding an ongoing "favorite Christmas song" contest on his blog, so even though it seems like I fall in love (again) every day with a new song on Robin's CD player, I contributed "Fairytale of New York" as my favorite 'cause it's just, you know, so goofy and scruffy-boy and real. (For the record, Robin's favorite is "I Believe in Father Christmas", which is certainly in my Top 10.) But the link I supplied Skippy to the lyrics wasn't working today, so I did a search and found this link. Which is working, but wrong. You know why? Because in the chorus - you know, the part where they're insulting each other? - it self-censored the vowel in "slut" (in the lyric "you're an old slut on junk") and replaced the line "you cheap lousy faggot" with "you're cheap and you're haggard." Now that, my friend, is the definition of "politically correct," that much-misused phrase that right-wingers and ignorant message board posters all seem to think means something like "people out to destroy tradition by opining that folks should be more inclusive and nicer to each other, the spoilsports." No no, politically correct is actually a lefty term, and means (or used to mean) nothing more than "gee, we like these folks and they're well-meaning and all but this is all just a little anal-retentive, don't you think?" Anyway, I think "cleaning up" the lyrics of a song where the participants deliberately insult each other for comedic and dramatic effect because you don't want to use a purposely-derogatory phrase like "slut" or "faggot" is a bit much. So you can go here or here for the actual lyrics to "Fairytale of New York," cheap lousy faggots and all.

Well, with Lou Reed over it's time for Stina Nordenstam. Can't get much more eclectic than this. Happy merry.