I was just thinking of doing this!
I'm surprised that there isn't at least one from the last 30 years. By which I mean I'm surprised there isn't exactly one, "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Miarahais Carey.
What's the Worst Christmas Song? McCartney's "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" certainly rates way up there.
LAAAAAST Christmas you gave me your heart, but the very next day you gave it away . . .
No Slade? No Band Aid? That bar chart is bollocks, surely.
4: But, but . . . I'M special!!!1!!!
The weird thing about the UK equivalent is that it cuts off sharply in 1989, as if it was something to do with the cold war. Also, the airplay distribution seems to centre on 1973 or thereabouts.
Then there's the anomalous "Fairytale of New York" spike - the WOW! signal of Christmas records, a message from the alien world of real music.
That graph fails to control for the decreasing relevance of radio to people younger than baby boomers.
2 gets it exactly right. That will snap me into motion to turn whatever's playing it off, if there's any way to do it. I don't know why that song particularly drives me nuts -- I don't mind McCartney generally -- but it's loathsome.
SimpHavWonXTime has contributed more to musical history than you think.
5: Slade's Christmas song doesn't get much play at all over here in the States.
I know this because one Christmas spent in London I played the UK version of Cranium with a mixed company of Brits and Americans and one of the cards tasked me with whistling/humming said tune. I was unfamiliar with it but had heard it in a Tesco's or somewhere and so was able to create a rough approximation, but my two US teammates didn't have a clue, even after time was up and a British person performed a truer version of it for them.
4 - That has to be the worst, right? Two observations:
1 - The actual lyric is "Last Christmas, I gave you my heart."
2 - Given the nature of the song, it could just as well have been cited on the "Mock, pity, or fear?" thread.
5: Slade's Christmas song doesn't get much play at all over here in the States.
One thing it has in common with every other Slade song. Back in the 80s we even had our own band called "Quiet Riot" whose main job was to cover Slade songs in an Americanized fashion, so the strange sight of those flat-cap-wearing hooligans couldn't pollute MTV.
14 gets it exactly right.
Also, speaking of Band Aid, surely I've told this story here before, but I can't find it. I had this roommate with awesome evil genius tendencies and around the time "Feed the World" came out, he was working in the kitchen of a restaurant with a jukebox and that single got installed and so of course everyone wanted to play it all the time because oh the humanity. He hated the song to begin with and his hatred only grew what with having to listen to it 50 times a day.
So one early morning he went in for breakfest prep with a pocket full of nickels and played the song repeatedly while nudging the jukebox just enough to gently scratch the 45 so that the entire song ended up sounding like it was a lofi masterpiece from some obscure 70s heavily fuzzboxed garage band.
I'm pretty sure the worst Christmas song is the Band Aid one because of the we'll-keep-singing-until-you-convert vibe.
The top 20 Christmas songs in terms of radio and air play in the past decade are these:
1. All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
2. Last Christmas - Wham!
3. Fairytale Of New York - The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl
4. Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
5. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard
6. Do They Know It's Christmas? - Band Aid
7. Driving Home For Christmas - Chris Rea
8. Stop The Cavalry - Jona Lewie
9. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
10. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Dean Martin
11. I Believe In Father Christmas - Greg Lake
12. Wonderful Christmas Time - Paul McCartney
13. Merry Christmas Everyone - Shakin' Stevens
14. Step Into Christmas - Elton John
15. The Power Of Love - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
16. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John And Yoko
17. Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee
18. Winter Wonderland - Darlene Love
19. Stay Another Day - East 17
20. 2000 Miles - The Pretenders
According to PPL at this time last year. So Randall is wrong, again, and XKCD sucks, as always. (Also, there is no song called "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire." The song with that lyrics is called "The Christmas Song.")
I do like many of the older standards. I like many of these newer standards too, actually. ("Last Christmas" as done by Wham! was forgettable, but as covered by many other people -- like Ohbijou for instance -- it's fab.) I have never, however, cared much for Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," which seems to have persisted longest in popularity. Probably my favourite Christmas song is "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis," particularly as sung by Neko Case (because she makes it absolutely convincing); but a close second is Christmas in Harlem by Kanye West. It's deer-icious!
I hate Christmas music more than all my other hates combined and multiplied by 3 (and I am filled with hate, my peopoes). Predictably, I ended up married to somebody who would listen to those 20 fucking songs on repeat all year round if given the opportunity.
The Christmas album of choice in our house is this one, which is really pretty well done if, contra apo, you can handle christmas music and, contra many people, you can handle remixes of classic songs.
According to PPL at this time last year. So Randall is wrong, again, and XKCD sucks, as always.
Everything about that article and music company is taking place in the UK.
I kind of like some Christmas music, as long as it stays put in December. CA makes me listen to "Lessons and Carols" and all his Head Chorister shit, which, well.
Oh wait, I didn't mean "Feed the World", I meant "We are the World", which is a much worse song.
23: Yep. I've never heard some of those on the radio ever.
But can be awful in any time of year!
23: Yeah, PPL=UK. Munroe's source is ASCAP.
25: you think? They're both pretty goddamned horrible.
Is this thread the right place to heap endless mounds of loathing on the abomination that is Mannheim Steamroller? Why, yes, it is!
22: Ours is this one, which is similar. (And clearly titled before that word took another meaning.)
18, does that entirely UK-based list really reflect what you hear in Canada? I think I've never heard #4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 19 in my life.
So Randall is wrong, again, and XKCD sucks, as always.
America-centric, perhaps. Though it specifically says "American" in the caption.
(Also, there is no song called "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire." The song with that lyrics is called "The Christmas Song.")
He wrote it like that so people would know what song it was.
30: they're no Trans-Siberian Orchestra, that's for sure.
if, contra apo, you can handle christmas music
I can handle this Christmas album.
27: But can be great in any time of year! It's the nature of but.
Does that Charlie Brown Malaise song count as a Christmas song? What the devil is its name?
23: A genuinely modern American list is harder to come by, but you'll have a hard time convincing me that American taste has remained absolutely static while UK taste has not. Most of the standards on PPL's list are also very commonly heard around the Holiday Tree on this side of the pond, yes?
Ninety-something percent of the time, xkcd is awful and unfunny. But he comes up with some very clever and enduring ideas with the remainder, so the smart thing to do is to refuse to get sucked into reading it and just wait for everyone else to start passing around the good ones.
I like the non-coercive Christmas songs that don't try to force you to be all Stimpy's-Invention-level SO! HAPPY! or filled with blessed rapture for the precious little baby against your will. "We Three Kings" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and stuff like that are fine in my book at this time of year.
And I've just remembered my choice for absolute worst Christmas song: The Little Drummer Boy. Listening to "Pa rum pum pum pum rum pum pum pum rum pum pum pum" on seemingly endless looop is sheer torture, even if it's Bowie and Crosby singing it.
Most of the standards on PPL's list are also very commonly heard around the Holiday Tree on this side of the pond, yes?
No, not at all. I only hear 6 out of those 20 songs around Christmas time.
(Ohhhh, it's the ASCAP list. They're using different metrics -- PPL's sample is much broader than just radio, which is what ASCAP uses in its "most-played" lists -- which is likely why they look so different. It would be tempting to give XKCD a break on that account, if it wasn't exactly the sort of thing the cartoonist advertised himself as being in the know about.)
you'll have a hard time convincing me that American taste has remained absolutely static while UK taste has not
The PPL list is mostly not stuff from the last ten years. At first glance it seems to be 70s and 80s. So the difference is that US radio is stuck in the childhood of the Boomers and UK radio is stuck in the childhood of Generation X.
42: uh, he said "based on radio airplay" right there on the graph.
32: He wrote it like that so people would know what song it was.
Yes, but if his premise were true, why would he need to do that?
Or rather, "2000-2009 radio airplay".
Listening to this classic onChristmas should be a tradition as hallowed as "Alice's Restaurant" on Thanksgiving.
Man. I didn't really buy that xkcd graph at first, but Castock's counter-argument is so bad, I'm coming around to it.
44: Yeah, your comment in 8 was a more apt criticism than mine, in retrospect.
Weirdly, my favoritest Christmas carol is the Jesus-iest Christmas carol. But it is so pretty! And in German! ("Es ist ein Ros entsprungen").
38: Why do you think ASCAP has the wrong numbers?
Here's their 2009 list of the top 25 of the decade.
Based on what I hear on the office radio, the Mariah Carey, Wham!, Paul McCartney and John and Yoko songs are probably in the top 40, but none of the others. In general it's a very, very, very boring collection of songs of the sort that 3nd-grade children learn for their recitals.
Also, I presume that the status of "Power of Love" and "2000 Miles" as Christmas songs has something to do with them being used in TV specials, like "Linus and Lucy" over here.
I like Christmas songs that mention Baby Jesus.
I should probably chart that UK series...
00s...0
90s...2
80s...8
70s...6
60s...4
50s...1
40s...1
hmm, so the peak was later than I thought (probably Slade-bias at work). I may have misallocated a couple (Greg Lake: 70s or 80s? Real fast!).
Damn, Standpipe, why doesn't this comments box do sparklines?
47: Our family listens to that song every year, now. I think I originally found it via an Unfogged thread.
45: Because everyone in America 1. knows the song and 2. calls it "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."
45: Because people know it by the lyrics?
You're really going to the mat on this one, aren't you?
Radio is less relevant to young people, but you get bombarded by satellite stations in every business. Hawaiian Punch spends her entire gymnastics class dancing her heart out to Christmas tunes.
56: Or, in my family "Jack Frost Roasting On An Open Fire."
59: Or "Christians roasting on an open fire, lions nibbling at their toes . . ."
*
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* * *
* * * *
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40s|50s|60s|70s|80s|90s|00s
ASCII art. An enduring phenomenon.
OH hai, comments box cat iz strippin leading spaces.
54: It may also be because UK popular music of the 40s and 50s was terrible. The best they could do in the 40s was Gracie Field, ffs, about whom Spike Milligan said that whenever the Allied advance slowed down in Italy, they'd hold a Gracie Fields concert in the rear echelons and suddenly the front line would leap forward again.
HTML whitespace compression FTW.
57: People seriously don't know it's called "The Christmas Song"? I honestly Did Not Know That.
"Children roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost ripping off your nose, Yuletide carols being flung on a fire, and men dressed up in pantyhose..."
I guess everybody has their family variations.
People seriously don't know it's called "The Christmas Song"? I honestly Did Not Know That.
I'm beginning to think that you don't have your finger on the pulse of the Christmas vein.
66: I guess maybe not. Next thing you'll be telling me other people don't eat jerk lamb for Christmas dinner.
I can see not liking xkcd, but I can't imagine the level of loathing that must be required to misinterpret it so wildly.
Next up: Randall Munroe birthers. Sure, he claims to be an American ...
Or how about that connection to NASA - you gotta figure he's involved in the alien coverup.
Next thing you'll be telling me other people don't eat jerk lamb for Christmas dinner.
Will next year though. That's a brilliant idea.
68: I was thinking of combining the two: Randall Munroe as an alien hybrid from Area 51. I think it's got legs.
"The Jerk Lamb of God" should be a Christmas song.
I always do "Jack Frost ripping of your clothes."
70: How many legs? Are we talking some kind of Spider Alien maybe?
73: I wouldn't go as far as eight legs. That might sound crazy.
Jack Frost roasting on an open fire, chestnuts nipping at your nose...
My favorite Christmas songs:
1. Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
2. The Night Santa Went Crazy - Weird Al Yankovic
3. The three or four most Christmasy songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas
4. Anything instrumental except for the really repetitive, earwormy tunes, because any unobtrusive background music is about as good as anything else.
5. Everything else.
Also, Randall mislabeled the Baby Boom, so he's clearly worse than Jonah Goldberg and Mike the investment banker rolled into one.
I admit I have a soft spot for "Let It Snow", because it features in the Greatest Christmas Film of All Time.
76: He specified the baby boomers' childhoods, so you've clearly been blinded by your insane loathing.
The version of Ukrainian Bell Carol on Community last night was pretty special.
If 80 means that Sifu really thinks Die Hard 2 is the Greatest Christmas Film of All Time, then he is dead to me.
The Thin Man sorta counts as a Christmas movie, right?
Today I learned about the subculture of XKCD hatred. What's up with that? I don't get it.
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as sung by Judy Garland makes jumping off the Tobin Bridge seem like the natural way to celebrate Christmas, because: sob.
@84
I've always been puzzled by this as well. Like any comic strip that's updated several times per week it's hit and miss, but some folks seem to feel personally insulted by it somehow.
CA makes me listen to "Lessons and Carols" and all his Head Chorister shit, which, well.
Hey! That stuff is great! Also: "In the Deep Midwinter." Also also: "Brightest and Best," at least the folky cover on the album Kathy & Carol.
The name "Mannheim Steamroller" always, always makes me think of the Baader-Meinhof Group, the common element being, of course, terrorism.
87.last: I'd never thought of it that way, but of course you're absolutely right!
Now I have to deal with the repercussions of realizing that my mom, driving around in her car in December, humming away cheerfully, is in reality a terrorist.
Like any comic strip that's updated several times per week it's hit and miss, but some folks seem to feel personally insulted by it somehow.
The narcissism of small differences.
Whenever I read an XKCD cartoon that I really like, I go to XKCD sucks, just to get the other side of the story.
I think the hatred is that it's pretty clearly aimed almost exactly at Unfogged commenters and our ilk elsewhere. So when it's stupid, which it is fairly often (see 86), people feel personally insulted that the cartoonist thinks they're the kind of person who would laugh at whatever the stupid thing is.
I'm very fond of it, but I don't get insulted easily.
Is there a backlash against Dinosaur Comics? I don't think I know anyone who just plain doesn't like it. It's more of a get-it/don't-get-it split. Some of them aren't very good, but they don't inspire hatred. Achewood-loathing I don't agree with but fully understand.
I'm more and more into SMBC these days. Never liked Achewood or Dinosaur Comics.
i have never, ever, felt insulted by xkcd. i've never even thought that one could be insulted by xkcd - the concept literally never crossed my mind.
people feel personally insulted that the cartoonist thinks they're the kind of person who would laugh at whatever the stupid thing is
now that's narcissism !
I think Dinosaur Comics doesn't get loathed because it's not purporting to be smart. (I mean, it's the kind of stupid smart people like, but it's not selling itself as smart.) XKCD is 'hey smart people, look at this smart joke I'm making that only smart people will get', but DC isn't like that.
Achewood, I like myself, but I don't actually understand why -- finding it baffling and pointless makes more sense to me as a reaction.
94: That guy is very very funny and very warped.
I read SMBC, but I kind of hate it. So I'll be your backlash!
I had to read quite a few DCs before they suddenly became funny.
I assume the xkcd hatred is from people who's shrivelled souls make them allergic to whimsy.
M/tch is right: Little Drummer Boy really is the most godawful precious crap. I'm going to admit that I find Sleigh Ride really cheery though. Oh and what about that excruciating Hey Santa song? I haven't seen that mentioned yet.
99: Kobe; that is precisely it. I hate hate hate whimsy.
Annie's sexy baby Christmas song on Community last night was fucking hilarious.
I don't hate xkcd. Some of them are actually pretty funny or clever. Most don't seem related to humor or cleverness. But I've learned not to browse through the site when sent there from a link.
Comics are not logical, captain. It's a waste of time to try to understand why people like/don't like them. Some perfectly human beings don't like any of them. Me, I read xkcd because it's funny about 1 in 4, which is good enough for a single frame, but I don't get achewood at all. Tough shit, who cares, doesn't make e.g. nosflow a bad person. Etc.
of the recent christmas songs, low's "just like christmas" is good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IippcraBPKA
The ascap list doesn't include any non-ascap songs like BMI's "The Christmas Song".
In the Intentionally Depressing Christmas Music category, you can't beat Joni Mitchel's "River," or (and I'm ashamed to admit this) Robert Downey, Jr's cover of it from his brief appearance on the last season of Ally McBeal.
Achewood, I like myself, but I don't actually understand why -- finding it baffling and pointless makes more sense to me as a reaction.
That is, in fact, precisely my reaction to Achewood. Never did understand what people saw in it.
(I had the same reaction to Sluggy Freelance. And Goats, after the reboot. I miss the original Goats.)
@106
What puzzles me isn't the fact that some people don't think it's funny (humor is a personal thing & etc.). It's that there is an intensity of loathing that seems odd in the context a a geeky stick figure comic.
I'm inclined to agree with 89 as the explanation.
107 is very good. 85 is exactly right. The trick to interpreting "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is to suggest the word "Fucking" in place of the word "Little." Diana Krall does an exceptional job of this; her interp. is one of my favorite recordings ever.
Further to 110: here is the RDJ version of "River."
In further evidence of what is apparently my bad taste, I just sent a grad school friend this for his birthday.
I started listening to the song linked in 47 but gave up pretty quickly and took off my headphones. I left it playing in the background and now it's loud enough for me to hear it again and I can't stop laughing.
What puzzles me isn't the fact that some people don't think it's funny (humor is a personal thing & etc.). It's that there is an intensity of loathing that seems odd in the context a a geeky stick figure comic.
It's because they think the author might secretly be one of that kind of nice guys.
92: I honestly don't hate xkcd, BTW, and I'm not really sure how many of the people who "hate" it actually Hate It. I find it sort of lame and overrated, like Chris Rock, and fun to make fun of on those grounds, but as alien hybrids go I don't really think Randall is evil enough to sport more than six legs. (And it's just as entertainingly instructive to have one's musket backfire as it did for me here.)
What puzzles me isn't the fact that some people don't think it's funny (humor is a personal thing & etc.). It's that there is an intensity of loathing that seems odd in the context a a geeky stick figure comic.
Every couple of weeks there's one where the message seems to be "Isn't it great to be a really smart young person who's open about sexuality and works with computers and lives in a big city? Why isn't everyone like us?"
This classic Christmas song has unfortunately been resurrected. It seems aimed at 3-4 years old, but the 7 year old grandnephew places it far far too much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0t_tadZJU
All these comments and no mention of the Waitresses?
There are just periods of time /places that get reified into being the essence of childhood innocence, Christmas, etc. Victorian England and late 40s-early 50s northeast US are two of those places. No one wants to see a "regency period" Christmas or a "1988 Sunset Strip Hair Metal Christmas."
Actually, I have a theory that the 1970s has become a new glorified childhood era of innocence for twee hipsters who are slightly too young to claim it.
121: Seventies-vintage photographs look really poignant and innocent to me, actually, now that you mention it. But then, so do photos of my own Eighties childhood and photos of the world of my pre-child parents from the Fifties and early Sixties.
I've sort of noticed that too, although as someone who grew up and has just barely there memories of streetwalkers, bathhouses, the Pussycat theaters, and constant apocalyptic and depressing pop culture, the idea of the 1970s as a time of innocence is truly one of the most preposterous things ever.
Speaking of the '70s, it reads as completely lame, but I wish there was a video of SNL's "Let's Kill Gary Gilmore For Christmas".
123: Yeah, the Eighties likewise.
Seventies-vintage photographs look really poignant and innocent carefully selected and edited to me, actually, now that you mention it.
Sometime during the 70s-early 80s I heard diabetic needles being advertised on the hard rock radio station. The target audience wasn't diabetics. Right after it came the Mormon mission ad. Two angels fighting for the same soul. Who won?
70's-era photographs make me think: "Why, why, why am I wearing a dress made of patches of all different colors of calico? Whose idea was this?"
127: In the sense that anyone's photos are selected and edited, I guess. I'm talking more about family photos and such.
I had, as a child, vivid red hair. My mom dressed me in fashionably vivid clothing made of the unnatural fabrics beloved in that time.
I assume that portion of my 70s experience is why all my pants are brown and all my shirts are blue.
Yeah, I don't really get the "carefully selected and edited" bit of 126 either.
The '70s are so over. Like thirty years ago.
Although for vivid and neon and ugly, boy did I love wearing jams and Hawaiian shirts as a misguided kid in the 80s.
And then I discovered my love for fedoras as a young tween.
the idea of the 1970s as a time of innocence is truly one of the most preposterous things ever.
And the thing is, you see people actually doing this a lot. The 70s was just long enough ago that it should be the good-old-days for many people. But they can't say that, because it is ridiculous.
Normally, you have to draw the craziness out. People will say, "When I was a boy, people had respect for their elders." And you have to say "Wait, you're my age, so really you're talking about the 70s. Tell me more about how people acted better in the 70s."
Carly Fiorina had this problem in her campaign for governor. Remember the ad she had about how great things were when she moved to California, and how they've all gone to pot? And then the reply ad pointed out that Fiorina came to California in the 70s, when the governor was...Jerry Brown.
@123
Yeah. I was pretty young but I can remember the general tone of late 70's culture, and it was basically "everything's f*cked".
Kinda like now, really...
Actually, 136.2 isn't quite accurate. Everything is indeed f*cked, but today's pop culture doesn't really reflect the fact.
As I understand, crime did peak during the 70s, including murder, etc.
136: Yeah, remember when Nixon was like the worst fucking President ever?
138: Unless one counts the extensive corruption of banking and political systems since. (I don't think it would've been possible to pull off the behaviors that led to the current financial crisis in the Seventies, at any rate.)
139: They say that to kill, you must first dehumanize the victim. Leisure suits let the victim dehumanize himself.
I had, as a child, vivid red hair.
This explains so, so much. Though perhaps only to me.
Yeah, remember when Nixon was like the worst fucking President ever?
So what have we learned? That there are other categories of "bad" beyond simple criminality...
Many redheads are offended by the bigoted presumption that they're all slightly insane. Others seem to revel in it.
It's better to be ruled by evil than stupid?
That should be "It's better to be ruled by evil than by stupid evil."
150: Need to update Bob Dole's, "Look there's see no evil [Ford], do no evil [Carter] and evil [Nixon]", crack.
No one wants to see a "regency period" Christmas or a "1988 Sunset Strip Hair Metal Christmas."
I would pay good American dollars for A Very Sammy Hagar Christmas.
I would pay a much smaller amount of Canadian dollars for David Lee Roth's Christmas Hamfest.
I would pay a couple of East Caribbean Dollars not to have anything to do with any of the concepts or products proposed in 152/3
153: Particularly given that Diamond Dave is Jewish.
155: Diamond Dave, apo? Anti-semite.
And the dreidel will rock, M/tch.
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as sung by Judy Garland makes jumping off the Tobin Bridge seem like the natural way to celebrate Christmas, because: sob.
Whereas "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as sung by the cast of the Christmas Tradition Holiday Revue in Savannah makes going on a murderous rampage seem like a great idea. Seriously, this was one of the songs near the end of the show where I almost had to leave the theater. They sang the lines "Through the years we all will be together / If the Lord allows" with this horribly smug emphasis on the fact that they were invoking god instead of the fates.
158: I'm about to stab someone just having read that. Good grief.
For some reason, the Lord has now allowed to be stuck in my head David Lee Roth belting out "Hannukah!" to the tune of "Panama".
157: "Have you seen junior's braids?"
I would pay good American dollars for A Very Sammy Hagar Christmas.
"Shout at the Nativity with Mötley Crüe and Special Guest Krokus! December at the Sands! This Yule... METAL RULES!"
And the dreidel will rock
I think Caroline's schools holiday program has left most of the children believing that Judaism is a religion based entirely on spinning dreidels.
40.--We Three Kings" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"
There is a common thread here...
168: Yep, they're both Christmas songs. Well spotted.
I just thought of another awful Christmas song that I really really hate: Silver Bells. Especially the "jingaling . . . hear them ring . . ." part.
Although now that I think about it, I guess I had always assumed that the merry gentlemen in question were the three kings, but I don't think the song actually comes right out and says that explicitly.
Anyway, tidings of comfort and joy to all of you.
I sort of dislike "Let it Snow" and "White Christmas.". Guess what, it's NOT GONNA SNOW.
170: The gentlemen aren't merry, or at least the song doesn't say they are. The narrator is exhorting God to 'rest [them] merry'. Or that's my story and I'm sticking to it, anyway.
Gods rest ye, Unitarians, let nothing you dismay
Remember there's no evidence there was a Christmas Day
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say
O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
Glad tidings of reason and fact
Our current Christmas customs come from Persia and from Greece
From solstice celebrations of the ancient Middle East
This whole darn Christmas spiel is just another pagan feast
O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
Glad tidings of reason and fact.
There was no star of Bethlehem, there was no angels' song
There could not have been Wise Men for the trip would take too long
The stories in the Bible are historically wrong
O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
Glad tidings of reason and fact
172. Then the inference is that they'll be merry by the time God gets done with them. What does God do for the ladies?
What puzzles me isn't the fact that some people don't think it's funny (humor is a personal thing & etc.). It's that there is an intensity of loathing that seems odd in the context a a geeky stick figure comic.
It's the buckets of smugness, I think.
Actually, though, I'm pretty fond of the chiptune carols.
176: That's nothing compared to the smugness of buckets.
178: ah yes, one of those oddballs group nouns. "A smugness of buckets", an earache of otters, a magnitude of communities.
They sang the lines "Through the years we all will be together / If the Lord allows" with this horribly smug emphasis on the fact that they were invoking god instead of the fates.
According to wikipedia, those are the original lyrics, which were secularized for popular release.
Yeah, I googled when I got home and found that. Still doesn't excuse the emphasis.
And then they ended the show with "O Holy Night." Jesus, people. Don't have mediocre musical revue singers do that song.
Happy Birthday, Jesus. From here.
Oh, I forgot a music industry related point. The Xkcd thing borrows from ASCAP, which in turn is only tracking air play of songs to which it's members have rights in the compositions, so in effect this is telling you the most popular Christmas songs written since the 1920s. My guess is that if you used a better metric for most heard achristmas songs, you'd see a lot of stuff like Hark the Hearald Angels that ASCAP has no interest in. So he is kind of wrong but only in that we're largely also nostalgic for the boomers great-grandparents' era.
Whoo baby was that illiterate. How about fixing my spelling iPhone instead of just capitalizing the names of Apple products?
Wiki's source may have been lying for Jesuss' sake, however.
I find this to be a pretty good interpretation of Jim Morrison getting into the spirit.
Also worth noting that BMI, not ASCAP, probably holds the interest in a lot of more contemporary Christmas songs, yet another reason Xkcd is wrong.
187: It's nice to know that though my aim was off, the target still needed shootin'.
It's the buckets of smugness, I think.
Cf. Cory Doctorow.
OT: I just got the results of my first physical in ten years. Doctor says I have "extremely low" cholestorol despite eating at least 3/4 a pack of bacon a day every day for almost two years. SUCK IT GRAINS.
But that's not off topic: smugness is one of the subthreads.
(Kidding. Yay for low cholesterol.)
I don't listen to the radio much, but hear Xmas music in or walking past stores. It's rare I don't hear a song I know from my childhood.
Phooey on all of you re the 70s. OK, the beer and bread are better now, and there's a lot more cleavage visible to the naked eye, but, delightful as these changes might be, they as nothing compared to what was lost in the backlash.
I feel like my personal smugness is better than the Xkcd smugness. I freely admit to being a horrible, entitled person, but eating lots of meat seems like a better, because more insane, source of self-satisfaction than being a self-satisfied computer dude who has meaningful conversations with his girlfriend.
I feel like my personal smugness is better than the Xkcd smugness.
One would hope?
being a self-satisfied computer dude who has meaningful conversations with his girlfriend is impressively successful and fairly famous due to drawing stick figures on a semi-regular basis.
Dunno, Cap'n Bacon of the Eighty Hour Weeks, think he might win.
Only "extremely low" bad cholesterol, I hope? You want the good kind. HDL.
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Broadly speaking of Christmas...Bonsaisue, the Partial Derivatives and I will be coming up to NYC Christmas Day and leaving I think the 30th. If we could arrange a meetup, we'd be interested. We will be staying in Astoria, but would happily journey to more central locations.
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85: I wish I had known you weren't being hyperbolic, I wouldn't have looked for it.
138: As I understand, crime did peak during the 70s, including murder, etc.
Not exactly, though the homicide rate comes somewhat close. There's a different set of homicide rate stats here, which puts the peak year as 1980 rather than 1991 (both were pretty bad).
I love 173.
Also, Halford, the chart from the OP tracks *extremely* well with my impression of radio play.
194: He actually can draw. Sometimes he has panels that feature realistic backgrounds. Also, he just has a good sense of composition. You can't hate on him for being untalented as an artist.
199: I just like singing "glad tidings of reason and fact" this time of year.
I first saw this in a comment thread at PZ Myers' blog.
200: I'm not! The fact that he actually can draw doesn't change the fact that he usually draws stick figures.
201: As Prof. Fischer notes (link in 204), "Another short-term influence is bloody competition among armed criminals - for example, over alcohol distribution during Prohibition and over crack cocaine during the 1980s." That accounts for at least part of it.
The graph that he shows is one of the things that convinced me back in the early 90s that homicide was directly related to drug prohibition: you get a big surge in the 20s during Prohibition, Prohibition gets repealed and homicide rates drop like a stone starting practically the very next year, and then Nixon launches the War on Drugs in the late 60s/early 70s and homicide rates soar back up to Prohibition-era levels. There's more going on than that, especially since homicide rates have dropped again without legalization, though I'm not sure if that would still be true if we took the current gang wars in Northern Mexico into account. So maybe we've just exported a bunch of the drug-war related violence for the moment.
190: I just got the results of my first physical in ten years. Doctor says I have "extremely low" cholestorol despite eating at least 3/4 a pack of bacon a day every day for almost two years. SUCK IT GRAINS.
I think the cholesterol thing is a function of the ratio between HDL (good) and LDL (bad) cholesterol. F'example, my LDL is tending toward the high side of normal, but my HDL is freaking through the roof (it's the lentils, Halford), which offsets the LDL.
But the ratio isn't an entirely straightforward proportion, which is to say that if your LDL (bad) cholesterol is really, really bad, it's not enough if you have awesome HDL -- that doesn't offset it enough.
""extremely low" cholestorol"
Watch out:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/138557.php
I wouldn't say I have a cholesterol. More of a cholestersome, really.
My cholesterol is not good. I asked my doctor what I should eat and he said that he didn't care so long as I lost weight. Fucker.
I really need to get mine checked again. Been 4 stress (eating) filled years.
210: It's like you don't even listen to Halford. Bacon, dude. Bacon.
Kevin Bacon killed cholesterol in Tremors IV.
210: Sorry, Moby. But we all know the only reason Halford's cholesterol is so "low" (whatever that means) is because that he beats up dead tires in his spare time. With enthusiasm.
214: Kevin Bacon www only in the first one. The dad from "Family Ties" was in 1, 3, and 4.
Losing elections is pretty unpleasant.
Also, I don't think munroe can draw very well.
Just watched A Phineas and Ferb Family Christmast. Surprisingly disappointing.
Also, my favorite christmas song is The Little Drummer Boy, I don't care people say. The tv show depicting it, with the sort of claymation figures? made a deep impression on me as a kid.
220: The worst part about The Little Drummer Boy is that people ask, "Do you know the drumbeat for The Little Drummer Boy?"
And it's not like there's a memorable drum part from any rendition of the song. It's people saying "pa rum pa pum pum".
(But it's a cute song, and my mom says it reminds her of me, which is totes adorbz or whatever.)
Parsimon is a sick puppy indeed.
What I remember is a medley of "The Little Drummer Boy" (1957) and "Do you see what I see" (1962) by Bing Crosby. I really dread it. It's one of those things that's good enough that you can't ignore it.
I just found out that DYSWIS is an anti-war song written during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Damn.
Also done by the Hairy Simian Corral, ha ha ha.
I just found out that DYSWIS is an anti-war song written during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Huh. For what it's worth, I remember the Little Drummer Boy tv adaptation thing as anti-colonialist or something. His parents were killed! In some kind of act of oppression by .. some people. It was horribly tragic and shocking and not acceptable.
Hm, wikipedia doesn't shed light. Maybe I'm completely misremembering this.
I'm (irrationally, yes, I know) annoyed by Lea Michelle's "Glee" cast version of O Holy Night (which I now hear whenever I go shopping, it's piped through the store's PA system all over NJ). She sings it in that 'tragic songbird' mode which makes one think of a failed romance between she and the Christ child. Jesus.
Glee fucking blows. False representation of show choir all around. They don't even show the band that you'd need to do what they're doing.
Er, in the one episode I saw.
(Yeah, I played in show-choir band, what?)
Something weird is going in Manhattan today. I had to come into work -- stopped on the Upper East Side for Sally's swim practice, and then down on Wall Street. And in both of those places, and the subway between, there is a weirdly large number of twenty-somethings with the men in Santa suits and the women in SexySanta suits -- the sort of groups of people where it's sort of surprising they're sober. Like it was Halloween night, only with Santa costumes (and to be clear, not all perfectly matching -- these aren't professionals in costume).
I mean, it's not a bad day for a holiday party, but I've never seen so many people dressed up for holiday parties, midday in mid-December. It's strange.
Maybe we'll look back at 230 as something like the guy who inadvertently live-blogged the Bin Laden raid.
That's kind of the feel. It's too many people, over too large a geographical area, apparently doing the same thing. Which would be fine if December 10th were the traditional Merry Slutmas where twentysomethings put on red minidresses with fur trim and fishnets, but I've never noticed this happening before.
Marketing. Maybe to do with the opening of the new Apple store in Grand Central? This was the 6?
re: 232
Santarchy Santacon.
See: http://santarchy.com/ and http://nycsantacon.com/
Merry Slutmas
Eventually, every holiday will be sluttified. Doesn't bother me, though. I've gotten much better at maintaining eye contact when talking to people.
I'm working on a slutty George Washington costume for the fourth.
I am the creeping across rooftops in black clothes with a sword across my back of search-engine users.
I don't remember the sexxxy Santa outfits being such a part of it, nor do I remember being sober, but that does sound a bit like santacon.
138: The slutty bunny outfits for Easter will be a big step for the mainstreaming of furrydom.
Oh hey if your ability to be annoyed by "All I Want for Christmas is You" has been dulled by exposure, I recommend being stuck on a red line car with the Harvard band playing it. Nothing really restores powers of annoyance like tubas and glockenspiels.
242: Although I am sort of chuckling at how pleased you must have been.
236: You're being rude. No one spends money or effort on a slut costume and wants only eye contact. At least indicate you appreciate the effort if not the results.
"Said the actress to the bishop."
To repeat 196:
Broadly speaking of Christmas...Bonsaisue, the Partial Derivatives and I will be coming up to NYC Christmas Day and leaving I think the 30th. If we could arrange a meetup, we'd be interested. We will be staying in Astoria, but would happily journey to more central locations.
Anyone interested can email me. Front pagers please feel free to post it if you care to. We had a great time last spring meeting up with Jackmormon, teraz, teofilo, and (I think) bave (?) (I had more beers than perhaps strictly consistent with good memory formation).
We had a great time last spring meeting up with Jackmormon, teraz, teofilo, and (I think) bave (?) (I had more beers than perhaps strictly consistent with good memory formation).
Yes, Bave and Smearcase were there too. A fine time was had by all.
Ooh, hopefully I can make it. I'm out of town through the 28th, but home from then on.
Oh hey if your ability to be annoyed by "All I Want for Christmas is You" has been dulled by exposure, I recommend being stuck on a red line car with the Harvard band playing it.
Bright side: They weren't abusing one of those old Tom Lehrer classics or "Psycho Killer." Fight fiercely indeed.
Somewhat OT: I'm going to my first faculty holiday party tonight! It's like I'm really a grownup!
"Do you have any idea how college faculty members eat on what we get paid? A free meal is like honey to a bear to these people. They'll wanna eat enough to hibernate on!"
196/249: I'm in town and available starting the 27th.
When I was in fifth grade our music class sang "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" so much that I couldn't get it out of my head. I was going through a Metallica phase at the time--my brother had dated the sister of one of them, IIRC--and the chorus to the tune, which I could never remember, I sang to myself as "Rockin' around the Christmas tree / Swing the judgment hammer down."
234: Thank goodness our hipster assholes get that all out of their system with the Zombie Pub Crawl.
Is it stupid of me to defend Santacon's history as being more than a hipster asshole thing? Probably, yes. Poor Cacaphony Society, you know not what you hath wrought.
Oh god, the Zombie Pub Crawl. I always skipped that. Even binge-drinking grad students have their limits.
Can I say here that we've been enjoying Christmas Lounge for the first tree-trimming in our new house? Seemed more appropriate than our usual stream (Secret Agent).
One Santacon attendee yesterday broke from the pack and got into the background of some photos of the Russian Consulate protest.
o come o come immanuel, carol of the bells, and any excuse for greensleeves is good, though i don't think i could get tired of 'fairytail of ny'
i also think of 'child's christmas in wales' as an xmas song. People like when i play 'the heavy blinkers- chaplain's christmas' at xmas too.
I don't know if anyone is still reading this thread, but we just got invited to go caroling next weekend with a group of friends that I dearly love.
I hate Christmas music so much. And yet I really like these friends. This is making smoke come out of my ears. I've got a stubborn teen attachment to hating Christmas music.
Jeez, just go. If the only Christmas music you ever heard was carolers you probably wouldn't hate it all. And you can just move your mouth if you're in need of teenage validation of the continuing purity of your hatred. Or you can spend the whole time telling everyone how much you hate the music, but came along anyway because of how much you love them.
There are among us fifth columnists who have hated Christmas with a fiery hatred all their lives.
The obvious solution is to mix holidays and get something for everybody. Go caroling and TP the houses after they shut the door.