The Saddest Christmas Song Was Sung By Someone Who Never Heard The Smiths
We hope everyone’s enjoying a happy holiday…but HT Grinch Chuck Myers does not. He’s kinda hoping someone falls down and sprains an ankle today. I seen ‘em.
I’m not a fan of Christmas. Sure, I like the pretty lights and the attractive women in Santa outfits, but seeing yard after yard filled with glowing plastic manger scenes doesn’t fill my heart with joy. Hell, I’m not even a Christian and I find plastic mangers to be somewhat blasphemous. Maybe I can find an inflatable Lao Tzu to stick in my front yard.
Anyway. Given my tendencies towards Scroogely behavior, I like to spend the holidays surrounded by depressing music. “Fairy Tale of New York” doesn’t usually make it onto my mix CDs, because it’s just too darned happy. Yeah, I can conjure up some bitter sadness if I think of poor Kirsty MacColl getting mowed down by an asshole in a boat as she saved her son, but that’s not really specific to Christmas.
No, the songs that bring a smile to my withered lips are far bleaker than anything a drunk Pogue can conjure. “Lonely Christmas Eve” by Ben Folds is a step in the right direction, but the music isn’t very sulk-worthy. Folds’ ditty about a lubed-up Santa getting stuck in the chimney (“Bizarre Christmas Incident”) puts the “ahhhh” in my Bahhhh Humbug, but he really gets it right on “Brick,” a timeless carol about a yuletide abortion.
Mew’s Christmas rape story, “She Came Home for Christmas,” is a mainstay, even if it is overwrought and schmaltzy. Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” could be titled “Christmas Carol from the Crack Addict Hookers Who Work the Corner By My House,” and Meryn Cadell’s “Cat Carol” still makes me misty-eyed even though the neighborhood stray is living in my basement and pissing on the childhood memories I have stored down there.
These are all great songs to play as I sit in a dark room with a plate of nachos and a worn-out copy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that plays soundlessly on my vintage VCR. But last year, I discovered* what might be the saddest Christmas song of all. It’s a song that you may have heard, a little tune called “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
No, I’m not shitting you. This is some bleak stuff. Read on to find out why…
First things first. Forget everything you know about the song. Forget that crap about hanging stars on the highest bough, and our troubles being out of sight. No, no, no, no, there will be none of that. And I’m talking about the original version, with a young Judy Garland singing on the soundtrack to Meet Me in St. Louis.
Next, put aside your inability to deal with subtleties. This isn’t Jimmy Eat World or Alkaline Trio, so you’re not going to get smacked in the head by a slit wrist. The songwriters did this crazy thing where they actually trusted the listener to pick up on a couple of key words, so you need to pay attention.
Before you press play, you should accept that this was recorded more than a decade before Elvis stole rock and roll from all the black guys who did the same thing, did it better, and didn’t get paid for it. There’s some crazy ass vibrato on her voice, and she sings like a character from an early Disney movie. Deal with it.
And you, the homophobic dude who’s lurking back there in the corner: listening to Judy Garland doesn’t make you gay. The latent desire to suck tons of cock makes you a homosexter, not Judy. And, shit, of course you’re gay already, or else you wouldn’t be so damned scared of them queers.
Okay, I think you’re finally ready to listen. You’ll need to find Judy Garland’s original version from Meet Me in St. Louis. Make sure you don’t listen to one of the awful versions that she recorded later, because she was obviously too ignorant to recognize a good thing when she sang it.
Check out the line, “Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.” That’s nice. Next year. Next year, things will be good. Next year, there won’t be any trouble. Right now, however, life is totally fucked. Not only are our troubles in sight this year, but they are on top of us like the dude in that Mew song.
The middle of the song has a bunch of stuff about how things might once again be how they used to be. It’s all good, but let’s jump to the last few lines: “Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” My God, this is better than going off of Prozac! Somehow, some way, we will muddle through another year (or six) until things get good again. Somehow, someday soon, life will be A-OK. And watch out for The Fates, who may or may not break our kneecaps. In the meantime, it’s going to suck harder than a hooker in need of heroin on Christmas morning.
As a semi-professional muddler and an aspiring curmudgeon, I’m always waiting for “someday soon.” I know that, someday soon, I’ll be excited to go to the mall and partake in rampant consumerism without giving a shit about the socioeconomic implications of my spending. Someday soon, I’ll be excited to throw 20 years of vegetarianism out the window and eat a bigass turkey with a bunch of family members who I don’t even like**. Someday soon, I’ll be stoked to buy a light-up manger scene and stick a big baby Jesus (not that kind) on my front lawn.
Until then, I’m going to turn down the lights and eat my nachos and dig on watching Jimmy Stewart peer into the abyss. And this year, I think I’m going to ask Ms. Judy to sing me a sweet little song about someday soon.
* Without Chris Willman’s 12/15/2006 article, “There’s Something About Merry,” in Entertainment Weekly, I never would have made this discovery. Thanks, Chris.
** I’m taking some poetic license here. I like all of my family members quite a lot, at least all of the ones who are not schizophrenic and/or institutionalized for being homicidal maniacs.
[...] Christmas — now here’s some sad shit to bring you [...]
The way Karen Carpenter sang it was both beautiful and sad. You put on the Carpenter Christmas and you just want to open a bottle of scotch and drink the holiday away. What’s even sadder? On the same album is “Merry Christmas Darling”. For being the all american kids from Whittier, California, the underlying theme to their music was always tinged with sadness. Excuse me while I wipe away my tears in cyber-privacy.