Rocking around the Christmas tree

Dear Mum,

I’m sure you’ve gathered that one of my favourite parts of decorating for Christmas is the festive CD, having pranced about the house in a Santa hat every year upon its first annual play.

Whilst The Buble is for Christmas dinner, his sultry croons providing the ideal aid to digesting vast quantities of festive goodness, the Christmas pop album is the better soundtrack to the decking, adorning and general titivating of halls.

Listening and, certainly in my case, shimmying to the Christmas classics is rather like pulling on an old favoured jumper. It offers the phrase “Oh I forgot about this one!” along with comforting nostalgic recollections and great value for money.

One simply does not grow tired of Slade, Band Aid or Macca (whom Dad and Kate saw last night and said was sensational BUT didn’t play ‘Wonderful Christmastime’, thus losing a few brownie points with me) jingling their bells. Like a Santa outfit, they are timeless.

This is not, however, the case for all yuletide yodels. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ makes me want to vom into my Santa hat. This is mostly down to it encouraging couples to canoodle in public. Nasty.

As for “Lonely This Christmas’ (without you to hold), I will be avoiding this song during Christmas 2011 if I’m going to avoid bawling into my pillow.

And what of ‘A Fairytale in New York’ and ‘The Power of Love?’ How are these in any way festive? They don’t mention babies in barns, snowy winter wonderlands or the charming innocence of children.

They instead taunt festive listeners with lyrics like “You’re an old slut on junk,” and “the hooded claw, Keep the vampires from your door.”

And a very Merry Christmas to you too...

Some of our favourite festive anthems do offer some perverse and, frankly, questionable lyrics.

‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ presents a rather ominous old Saint Nick, who lurks in the corner of rooms, judging those he casts his eye over, e.g. "He sees you when you're sleeping, He knows when you're awake, He knows if you've been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake!” Yikes!

Johnny Mathis, on the other hand, steals phrases from traditional carols in ‘When a Child is Born’. A bit of a cop-out really. And factually inaccurate.

I refer, in particular, to ‘Jesus Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day.’

Aside from the fact that theologians have established that the baby Jesus was born in Spring rather than the bleak mid-winter, it is no happy coincidence that Mary went into a convenient labour on an existing festival day. Whether religious or not, one cannot disagree that Christmas is celebrated because of the baby Jesus. He was not born on Christmas day, Christmas was born on his day of birth. Durgh.

The Beach Boys’ ‘Little Saint Nick,’ on the other hand, offers further gems of lyrical poetry after the classic “Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann.’

Specifically, “Christmas comes this time each year.”

Well, boys, thank you for this insightful exploration of the true meaning of Christmas. Your profound meditations on this iconic holiday is palpably enlightening while subtly explaining the reason for Christmas trees being erected worldwide.

Nothing gets by you, boys.

Pretenders join the Beach Boys in obvious examinations about the holiday, pointing out “2000 miles is very far”.

And yet, like that old jumper, with its pulled threads, back-of-drawer smell and questionable stain, we accept these classics for what they are - Christmas corkers. As cringe as Christmas cracker jokes and just as much of the festive tradition.