The Five Worst Christmas Songs of All Time

The major "light music" station (which normally plays Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga without irony) in the New York area has been playing Christmas music since before Thanksgiving, and while there are some songs I never get tired of hearing, there are a handful of songs I haven't been able to stand since I first heard them. I want to silence my radio with a sledgehammer every time they come on (though, in an act of restraint, I normally just turn the radio off). In stores, where I can't escape these records as easily, I either head for the nearest exit or steal away to a corner where the piped-in music is less audible.

Here I present my choices for the five worst Christmas songs of all time. I could have expanded the list to ten, but my tolerance for unlistenable Christmas songs is too low to spend time pondering that many records. So, without further ado, here are my five choices:

"Christmas in America," Pat Benatar. The onetime spandex-clad rocker tried to go country with this jingoistic Yuletide song, and she hits us with her worst shot. Not to be confused with the Melissa Etheridge song of the same name, "Christmas in America" was written in the aftermath of 9/11, with subtle but maudlin references to the terrorist attacks, which would have been fine without each verse leading to the following chorus: "It's Christmas in America / Let the angels sing / It's Christmas in America / Let freedom ring / Let peace resound throughout the world / Especially on this day / It's Christmas in America / God bless the USA." Can't God bless the rest of the world while He's at it? Or is that resounding peace supposed to be good enough for them? This song is so fundamentalist - Pat even paraphrases the Pledge of Allegiance - it's for people who think God is an American and that Jesus was from Pennsylvania because he was born in Bethlehem.

"I'm Gettin' Nothin' For Christmas." If you ain't been nothin' but bad, don't complain about coal in your stocking. The child narrator of "I'm Gettin' Nothin' For Christmas, though, does just that and also drags us through two verses of his/her year's worth of sins - a couple of which are just accidents (like spilling something on Mommy's rug) that could easily be forgiven. What's unforgivable is that he/she deflects the blame to an anonymous third party ("Somebody snitched on me"), as if getting away with being bad is more important than being good. Promising to be good next year, the kid says, "I'd start now, but it's too late." Sheesh, the kid can't even get an early start in the last week of the old year?

"The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)." The sped-up voices on this 1958 anti-masterpiece were supposed to sound cute and cuddly. They were curdling and cloying. Chipmunk mastermind David Seville hopefully appreciated the First Amendment rights that allowed him to make this record, because in other countries he could have been executed for this! And trust me, Alvin being a little flat was the least of Seville's problems.

"Santa Baby." Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a slutty gold digger with a mile-long wish list of expensive gifts and a heavy dose of egotistical masochism. The fact that Madonna covered this song, made (in)famous by Eartha Kitt, seems to make perfect sense.

"The Christmas Shoes," NewSong. This song gets me so upset! The last thing I want to hear about while enjoying a cup of cheer is a song about a kid wanting to buy shoes for his dying mom so she can look her best when she meets Jesus at the Pearly Gates! A "contemporary Christian" country song with all the easy-emotion tear-jerking sanctimony the genre is known for, it's so depressing it makes you want to put the Christmas decorations away before you even put them up. Root canal would be less painful than experiencing this. A novelization of "The Christmas Shoes" - yes, someone actually fleshed this out into a novel - led to a TV movie starring Rob Lowe at about the same time he left "The West Wing," and he must have instantly realized the difficulty he'd have in finding good roles.

But you didn't think I was going to end it at that, did you? Although I don't hate any of the following songs, I've always had quibbles with some of the lyrics.

"It's the Most Wonderful time of the Year." While I've always enjoyed this 1963 song as originally recorded by Andy Williams, I've always had a problem with the song's insistence that among the things we can look forward to are "scary ghost stories." Don't you get the feeling that the song's composers were about two holidays behind? For the record (no pun intended), it was composed by Eddie Pola and George Wyle, and Wyle wrote the theme song for "Gilligan's Island." Yeah, I didn't buy the three-hour tour jazz, either.

"I'll Be Home For Christmas." "Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree." On the tree? Wouldn't that tip the tree over? Couldn't they put them under the tree like everyone else?

"Merry Christmas Darling," the Carpenters. I get the feeling that when Richard and Karen Carpenter partnered on this Christmas song, which Richard authored with Frank Pooler, they impacted the English language by using the word "Christmas" as a verb, and as a progressive verb at that ("I'm Christmasing with you"), which thus transited to the use of other nouns as verbs. Doesn't that really garbage the language?

"Wonderful Christmas Time," Paul McCartney. The choir of children practiced all year long to sing "Ding dong, ding dong"? They spent a year to perfect a song that sounds like an outtake from Wild Life?

"The Twelve Days of Christmas." I learned from an old Christmas record that he gave her nine drummers drumming, ten pipers piping, eleven ladies dancing, and twelve lords-a-leaping. But other versions have it as nine ladies dancing, ten lords-a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming. So which one is it? Can we get a quorum here?

If you're sick of all Christmas music by now, relax - come Sunday, it will all come to end. But, unfortunately, so will Christmas.