As a sea­son­al offer­ing, I like most Christ­mas songs, although I could do with­out hav­ing to endure them being blared out of cheap, over-mod­u­lat­ed speak­ers in stores for weeks before the event. What wor­ries me more, how­ev­er, is the oppor­tu­ni­ties they present to the eager tribe that seems to wake up every morn­ing hop­ing for some­thing to be offend­ed or out­raged by.

The ubiq­ui­tous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer is an easy top of the tar­get list. Despite the fact that the much-bul­lied crea­ture ends up the hero of the age­less tale, mak­ing overt note of his red nose is sim­ply not accept­able.
As for Jin­gle Bells, how can “Dash­ing through the snow/in a one-horse open sleigh” while “Laugh­ing all the way” have so far escaped the spot­light of ani­mal rights activists?
Nor should pop songs expect to be award­ed any­thing but a sym­bol­ic lump of coal in their stock­ing for bad behav­iour. An obvi­ous can­di­date is The Christ­mas Album by Chica­go. Its open­ing line ref­er­ence to “Jol­ly old St. Nicholas/Lean your ear this way” cer­tain­ly falls well into the damnable ter­ri­to­ry of ageism.
Ella Fitzgerald’s 1950 offer­ing “San­ta Claus Got Stuck in My Chim­ney” was last cov­ered (as far as I can find) in 2013.  Nonethe­less, the lines: “There he was in the mid­dle of the chim­ney/Roly-poly, fat, and round” are sure­ly a pri­ma facia case of body sham­ing.
And dear me, how do schools dare teach small chil­dren lines like:
A chub­by lit­tle snowman/Had a car­rot nose…AND…I’m a lit­tle snowman/Short and fat…

                               THE UNHOLY HOLY

Incred­i­ble as it may seem, ded­i­cat­ed righters of his­toric wrongs are also seri­ous­ly miss­ing the boat on tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas carols.
“We Three Kings” is all but guar­an­teed to offend anti-roy­al­ists and ‘small r’ republicans.
Sure­ly at least the wise men’s self-descrip­tion and mis­sion state­ment “…of Ori­ent are, bear­ing gifts we trav­el afar” ought to be scrubbed. Per­sons of Asian ori­gin might be upset by the sug­ges­tion that their lead­ers of times past vol­un­tar­i­ly paid homage and offered trea­sure to a white (if West­ern Chris­t­ian icono­g­ra­phers are to be believed) male. And doing so for no appar­ent good rea­son oth­er than a star in the sky smacks of taint­ing wise men with prim­i­tive super­sti­tion, does it not?
On first glance, “Good King Wences­las would seem safe. He was after all, a rich guy offer­ing to share with the poor, although maybe more along the lines of Elon Musk pay­ing tax­es than a pre­cur­sor to the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion. Con­sid­er­ing that Elon’s offer has met with as much scorn as it has acco­lades, how­ev­er, a car­ol laud­ing a gen­er­ous monarch ought not make the cut either.

                                POLITICS TOO

 Dis­put­ing the valid­i­ty of “Oh Lit­tle Town of Beth­le­hem” is a god­send (no pun intend­ed) to both sides of the argu­ment over land own­er­ship between Pales­tini­ans and Israelis.
Dit­to “O Come All Ye Faith­ful “. Is its repeat­ed “Oh come ye oh come ye to Beth­le­hem” any­thing oth­er than an exhor­ta­tion to a reli­gious upris­ing? In any event, depend­ing on your news chan­nel of choice, describ­ing Beth­le­hem as a place of “deep and dream­less sleep” bor­ders on “Fake news!!!”.
Less ambigu­ous to right­eous fem­i­nists must sure­ly be: “God rest ye mer­ry gentlemen/Let noth­ing you dis­may…” As if that isn’t sex­ist on its own, Mary gets bare­ly a pass­ing men­tion, as a vir­gin no less, which is judge­men­tal to say the least. Add in the fact that her strug­gle against pover­ty by hav­ing to give birth in a cow­shed mer­its only the decid­ed­ly obscure (and there­fore deeply sus­pect) line: “The which His Moth­er Mary/Did noth­ing take in scorn…” and the car­ol obvi­ous­ly must be can­celled.
Amaz­ing­ly, the 79-year-old Irv­ing Berlin clas­sic “White Christ­mas” still tops the Christ­mas charts. But it can only be a mat­ter of time before some­one works out how much mileage can be had out of insist­ing it isn’t about snow after all.
One could go on and on…but for now…to all those who may cel­e­brate any of the fore­go­ing oth­er than the open­ing sen­tence, I bestow upon you a bless­ing from that most hat­ed and sub­se­quent­ly beloved of Christ­mas main­stays, Ebe­neez­er Scrooge: “BAH. HUMBUG.”
To every­one else…

                                      Mer­ry Christmas

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