I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Christmas is my favorite time of year. As with most, I suppose my love of Christmas started when I was a young child. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, and can remember your childhood, what I have to say should come as no surprise. As a boy, Christmas was my favorite time, because it was one of two days in the year where I actually got something to call my own. (The other day being my birthday.) Yes, I loved Christmas for the getting, and I think there are few children that can deny that that’s why they love it, as well. It takes some growing up to discover the true meaning of the holiday.

Waking up on Christmas morning was the most magical part of my childhood, I loved it more than anything. I looked forward to it so much that, every year, I wanted to go to sleep on December 1st, and not wake up until the 25th. I remember I would get out my sleeping bag, put it in the living room, and tell my mom I was going to hibernate until Christmas morning. She would laugh with a smile. Well, being that humans can’t hibernate, and that I had to go to school, I never managed to pull it off.

As you might imagine, I was one of the kids that got up as early as possible on Christmas morning to wake up the rest of the family. One Christmas I woke up around 4:00 AM, and I knew that that was too early to wake my mom up. I figured I better wait until at least 5:30 to wake her up. Still, I got out of bed to see if Santa had visited. Sure enough, he had. The presents were there. They looked so wonderful under the tree. I was so excited I couldn’t go back to bed. I wanted the time to pass by faster, so I figured I would watch some TV. I ended up watching some video tapes of Winnie the Pooh. It wasn’t very Christmasy, but it did help the time pass by, and soon enough it was around 5:30 and I woke everybody up.

A year or so later, I wanted to make Christmas special for Santa Claus. So I got my alphabet blocks and spelled out Merry Christmas Santa Clause. (I thought Claus was spelled with an e.) I placed this message in front of the fireplace so that Santa would see my message to him as soon as he came down. To my disappointment the blocks were in disarray on Christmas morning, and I thought that Santa was mad at me for some reason, but he had brought me presents, so he couldn’t be that angry. Of course, I now realize that my mom must have tripped over the blocks when she laid out the presents.

The next year, my sister and I really wanted to see Santa. So, we decided to sleep in the living room, in hopes that Saint Nick would wake us. Well, to our disappointment, there were no presents on Christmas morning. I was shocked and saddened. My mom told us that we didn’t need presents to celebrate Christmas and that maybe we should try to find the true meaning of Christmas. That didn’t help. I mean, as I said previously, it was one of two times a year that I actually got anything. I was mad at Santa. I was mad at my mom for saying that maybe we didn’t deserve any presents. I was thinking that it was the worst Christmas ever. My mom even told my brother to go do some chores. She told him to get the swamp cooler cover out of the storage shed because we hadn’t put it on yet. Meanwhile, I was thinking, Christmas is already ruined because Santa forgot us, and you want us to do chores? Well my brother went out to get the cover, and to our surprise he came back with a bunch of presents. I figured that since Santa didn’t want to be seen, he left the presents in the storage shed. We celebrated Christmas in the kitchen that year, since that is where my brother brought the presents inside. It turned out to be one of the best Christmases I ever had. The year after that, was when I found out that Santa wasn’t real.

Quite a few years later, Christmas was still a great time of year, but there was no reason for my mom to place the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve night. Instead, she placed the presents under the tree as soon as they were wrapped up. This put me and my siblings in an interesting situation. One year, while our mom was at work, we’d open up all the presents and play with them, and then re-wrap them before she got home. One of the presents was a video game, and we completed the entire game before Christmas morning. I remember pretending to be surprised on Christmas morning that year. I don’t know if my mom ever knew about that or not. We only did that one time, we were more patient after that.

The wonders of Christmas morning faded after I got my first job. With that job came the ability to buy things. I didn’t have to wait for Christmas morning to get things. I could buy whatever anything that I could afford as soon as I got my paycheck. I also didn’t have to depend on my mom guessing at what I would like or not. I even remember telling a coworker, Christmas morning isn’t so great now that I can buy whatever I want. My coworker agreed.

Truth be told, since I’ve had income, Christmas morning has lost it’s magic. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I don’t like Christmas morning. Not because I don’t like Christmas, but because, to me, Christmas day is the end of the most wonderful season of the year. A season, that I would rather not see end.

I mentioned in my last post that I would be writing about the worst Christmas song ever. A song so annoying that makes me to lose my temper every time I hear it. Some may disagree with me that this song is bad at all. Others might agree that it is awful, but claim there are worse songs. To that, I say, Nay. The song I’m going to discuss today is the worst Christmas song to have ever existed. Period. It is probably the worst Christmas song that ever will exist. The song in question is Christmas Shoes. The most popular version being that sung by NewSong.

If you’ve heard this song, you probably recognized just how terrible it is, but maybe you didn’t realize why you hated it so much. I want to point out, line by line, exactly why this is the worst Christmas song ever. This is my opinion, of course, but honestly, I think I’m correct in my criticisms.

To fully understand the following argument you should probably listen to the song. (Although, I hate to put you through that kind of punishment.) In the case that you aren’t familiar with the song, let me go over the gist of the narrative: A kid wants to buy some shoes for his dying mother, but he doesn’t have enough money. The guy standing behind him in the line at the store, which is also the narrator/singer of the story, feels sorry for the kid and pays for the shoes. That’s it. Now, let me get into what is wrong with this song.

Let me begin by discussing the singing. It’s terrible. NewSong is a Christian band, and with that comes the the self-centered, I’m-so-great-because-I-sing-about-Jesus attitude that so many Christian bands seem to have. You know what I’m talking about, they sing in a faux-passionate falsetto that tells the listener, I’m better than you because I love Jesus. That isn’t to say I think there is something wrong with loving Jesus, I just hate it when people think they are so humble because they love Jesus, and Christian rock bands tend to sound like that. This song isn’t actually about Jesus, it’s about Christmas, but the singer still has that tone in his voice, and I hate it.

Let me move onto the lyrics. The song opens with the narrator describing himself as being in a store, waiting in line to check out. He’s standing behind a kid which he desribes with the following line: His clothes were worn and old, he was dirty from head to toe. This is the first major problem with the lyrics. This line basically makes the kid seem poor. Okay, right, so a kid is waiting in line in a store, and he’s poor. No real problem there, actually. The problem is that nowhere in the rest of the song does the narrator suggest that this kid is poor. My guess is that the kid isn’t poor. He just got really dirty so he’d look poor, probably to try to get sympathy from the guy singing the song.

Let me quote the awful, terrible, suicide-thought-provoking chorus, in full:



This is the be-all end to making this the worst Christmas song ever. Someone I know has been quoted as responding to this song by saying, Where’s my gun? I’ll shoot that kid’s mom right now if it’ll get this guy to stop singing. I don’t have a gun, but I feel the same way.

Let me explain what is wrong with this chorus, by posing some rhetorical questions: Why in the hell is this kid waiting in line at a store instead of spending time with his dying mother? If his mom is so important to him that he wants the clerk to hurry, why is he even there? Also, and this is the stupidest part of the chorus, what does his mom need shoes for if she’s going to die anyway. It’s a waste of money, and apparently this kid is poor. Oh, and another thing. I guess this song is about Jesus after all, so it only adds to what I previously said about the singer’s tone.

This chorus makes me hope the kid’s mom does die. Maybe if she did the kid would stop being so annoying. Well, I guess he’d be more annoying because he’d go around stores crying about how his mama died. This chorus makes me hope the kid himself dies. And, you know what, I don’t feel bad for saying that because this song is fake. That’s right. It’s not a true story. It’s made up. There was no guy in a store standing behind some kid that wanted to buy some shoes for his dying mother. It isn’t real. To be honest, even if it was real, it would type, that I’m sure the singer is, to sing about it.

Let me move on to the next part of the song. The next stanza begins with He counted pennies for what seemed like years; Then the cashier said, Son, there’s not enough here. Of course the kid didn’t have enough money, he was covered in dirt, he didn’t have enough money to get a new shirt. A shirt, that the boy needed, would have been cheaper than these shoes that his mom doesn’t need. This is why I think the kid is lying. I think he made up the whole story to get some free stuff. Think about it. The kid would have seen the price tag. He would have known how much money he had, especially if these shoes were so [bleeping] important (I have to restrain myself from cussing here). Why would he even go to the checkout counter unless he expected a handout? Cheapskate. His mom probably wasn’t dying at all.

I remember one time I went to a used video game store, and I did the same thing. I had to count out my pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters in order to buy the video game. I even said, Sir, I wanna buy this video game, for myself please. It seems really fun and I’ve got an addiction to appease. The clerk was kind of annoyed that I was paying in coins, and he didn’t even want me to include pennies in the equation, but you know what? I knew exactly how much the game would cost, and I brought enough money to pay for it. Sure, I looked desperate to be paying for the video game with coins, and I annoyed the person behind me, but at least I had enough money. I got my game, and I was happy. And you know what, I had the video game for more than one night, unlike the kid’s mom and her shoes.

I can’t help but wonder what is the matter with the kid in this song. I’ll tell you why his mom is dying, she was obviously too stupid to explain to her kid how commerce works, so I must conclude that she was too stupid to eat, and probably died of starvation. My guess is that her husband got sick of feeding her like a baby. I mean seriously, if she’d really been sick for a while, starvation fits the bill.

Let’s go to the next part of the song. The singer declares, So I laid the money down, I just had to help him out. You know what? The narrator got duped. As I said before, the kid was obviously lying. He made up the whole story. To be perfectly honest, if I was behind some kid and he was trying to buy something, I might help him out. Hell, if he was buying a video game, I’d definitely help him out, because I know it’s make the kid happy. If some guy felt sorry for me and bought me a video game, it would have made my Christmas. But shoes? No, never. In fact, I wouldn’t buy shoes for some kid’s mom specifically because I hate this song so much. I might buy shoes for the kid if he needed shoes, but for some woman that’s going to be dead the next day? No. The narrator got scammed, plain and simple.

Naturally, the song ends with the singer describing how it made him realize the meaning of Christmas, I knew that God had sent that little boy; To remind me just what Christmas is all about. Death? Dying mothers? That’s what you think Christmas is all about? Let me reaffirm that the narrator is an idiot.

What’s almost as bad as the existence of the song itself, is that there is a movie based upon it. A movie was based on this song! I don’t get it. This is, by far, the worst Christmas song, and a movie was built around the narrative. It’s a Hallmark Channel movie, it would have to be, they make the worst Christmas movies ever. I’ve never seen the Christmas Shoes movie, and I don’t want to. I don’t know why anyone would want to see it. Though I admit, that the song is so bad that the movie might actually be an improvement. Or, it might just be two hours of torture. The film stars Rob Lowe.

The final thing I want to say is that I’m not alone in arguing that this is the worst Christmas song ever, and because of that there is just one thing I don’t understand. Why do radio stations play this song every hour? At least it seems like they do. No one in their right mind should like this song, and yet the radio stations keep broadcasting it. I bet, and I mean I’d really put money down, that the DJs that play this song, hate it, and they play it because they think that people like it. They think it is the type of song that people want to hear between Santa Baby and Jingle Bell Rock so that they don’t feel guilty about the commercial exploitation of the holiday season. For me, and many others, that isn’t the case. The commercial exploitation is alright in my book, but this song isn’t.

About three years ago a friend of mine was discussing Christmas songs with me. He had recently read an editorial in the paper about someone’s opinion of the worst Christmas songs. My friend said the commentator had included songs such as John Lennon’s So this is Christmas and the infamous Band Aid song Do They Know It’s Christmas? (That’s the song about how there won’t be snow in Africa for Christmas, I guarantee you’ve heard it.) I told him that I kind of liked those songs, but none of them were my favorite. He asked what my favorite song was. I told him.

I’ve always liked Christmas music, and I don’t mean the classic carols, I mean everything else (though, that does include the carols when they are done right). It’s a great way to celebrate the holiday, it makes the season fun, and these songs are something you really only listen to during the season, so they never really get old.

My favorite Christmas song goes back to when I believed in Santa. You may recall from my last post that this was most of my young life, but this song goes back to when I was very young. Let me recall how I was introduced to it. I was in the mall with my mom, and she was looking around at stuff that I wasn’t really interested in. Things like ornaments and whatnot. We weren’t looking at toys, I know that, because my mom would never have bought a toy that was supposedly from Santa while I was there. Well, I was basically bored out of my mind, and then I heard it.

The tune was different from all the other songs that were playing on the intercom. It was bouncy, it was fun, and while I didn’t know much about sex appeal at the time, there was something about the female voice that started singing, that made me realize that cooties were more of a myth than Santa Claus. The first line was, and you may have guess this already, Santa Baby...

Right away, I knew this song was what Christmas was all about. Christmas was about getting stuff. That’s how I saw Christmas as a kid. This song satisfied my whole conception of Christmas. It was also a fun and sexy song. There were a lot of things mentioned in the song that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what sable was, or Tiffany’s, and I still don’t understand how a duplex could fit in a stocking, but I knew one thing. Everything in this song was expensive, and the girl singing wanted it all, and I liked that about the girl singing. She was like me, only her toys were different.

The version of the song I heard that day was probably sung by Madonna. I don’t know for sure, but it was in the 80s, so the timing is right. And while there have been other female singers to sing this song, many of them very similar in style to Madonna, I don’t think any of them are quite as classic as the Madonna version.

I still love the song. It’s still my favorite. Though, for different reasons than when I was a kid. I like it today for three main reasons. Firstly, because I understand that the song is tongue-in-cheek. It is a criticism of the commercialism of the holiday season. The second reason I like it, is because it is such a fun song (this is one of the reasons I liked it when I was young, as well). Thirdly, and most importantly, because every time I tell someone this is my favorite song, they look at me like I’m the weirdest person they’ve ever met. Some try to tell me it’s a stupid song, others try to explain to me that this song is exactly why Christmas is so commercialized these days. I like to see their reactions. I don’t offer any excuses for why I like it. I just do, and there is no reason to defend my taste in holiday music.

That’s all I really have to say about Santa Baby, but check back later, because, soon, I will have some comments on what I consider to be the worst Christmas song of all time. A song so bad, that it has caused some people to want to commit murder. A song so bad, that some people have attempted suicide because it started playing on the radio. A song so bad that it has almost single-handedly destroyed Christmas. A song so bad that I have never met anyone that likes it, and yet, for some reason, it still gets played on the radio, year after year.

On Thanksgiving Day, just two days ago, I was reminded at the dinner table of some of my memories of past Thanksgivings, and for the amusement of my readers I’d like to reminisce a little. First of all let me clarify the title of this post. I don’t actually call Thanksgiving, Turkey Day. In fact, I think that is a stupid name for the holiday, because it implies that everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving eats turkey on that day, which isn’t always the case. However, most of the stories that I was reminded of, this past Thursday, were related to the topic of turkeys so I saw it as a fitting title.

My Favorite Food?

First, let me go way back to when I was a youngster in Elementary School. At that time, I always told everybody that my favorite food was turkey. This was a lie, but in all fairness, I didn’t realize it was a lie. Let me explain. It seemed my family only had turkey once or twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and because I had it on such a rare occasion, it was a really big deal for me, and, admittedly I really liked the taste of turkey skin, so I’d always say it was my favorite food.

Truthfully, my favorite food as a child was pizza, and why wouldn’t it be? I mean, pizza had all the four basic food groups right there (there were only four food groups when I was growing up: meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables (these were one group), and grains), and pizza sure tasted good. But, admittedly, every kid’s favorite food was pizza, and as my readers know, I like to be different, so I decided my favorite food was turkey, which, of course, I ate rarely.

I don’t like turkey, and looking back, I never really did. Processed turkey is okay, it’s edible, you can make sandwiches out of it, but an actual baked bird is absolutely terrible. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never had a good turkey, but it seems to me that it’s a dry bird, it takes a lot of effort to chew, and as far as I’m concerned, it just doesn’t taste that good. I still have it on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that is more for the tradition than the taste.

My family had a ham for Thanksgiving once, and I liked that a lot better, but, of course, there were complaints that you’re supposed to have Turkey on Thanksgiving, so we never did it again, to my dismay.

The Deformed Turkey

Speaking of having other things for Thanksgiving, my family had a deformed turkey once. Well, it wasn’t really deformed, but when my mom brought the turkey out of the oven I thought it was deformed. You see, it had no legs or wings, it was a turkey missing it’s limbs. I told my mom I thought the turkey was deformed, and asked her if she got it because she felt bad for it. She just looked at me funny.

You see, in the years before that, my siblings and I just weren’t eating the dark meat on the turkey (the wings and legs), and since that meat was basically just sitting around until my mom ground it up, she figured she’d get a turkey that was all white meat. That is, a turkey that had no legs and wings. Well, to her disappointment, we didn’t want to eat that turkey at all, because we thought it was deformed, and we figured the meat must be bad.

Turkey Croquettes

A turkey is a fairly sizable bird, so naturally, when feeding a family of five there is plenty of turkey left over. Naturally you can’t just throw out the turkey, it would be a disservice to the animal that sacrificed itself to become your dinner.

In my family, the leftover turkey became what I call (and apparently this name is pretty universal) turkey croquettes.

What exactly is a turkey croquette? Well, I don’t really know. I best describe them as a wad of ground up turkey that is breaded and deep fried. Is it good? To answer that, recall that I don’t like turkey to begin with, so in my opinion, no, they aren’t very good. Somebody may like them, but not me. In fact, to make them taste good, you absolutely have to smother them in ketchup, and that brings me to my next memory.

In the weeks after thanksgiving, my brother and I would sit across from each other with a few turkey croquettes on our plates. Neither one of us wanted to eat them, but we knew our mom expected us to. We’d have the ketchup there on the table, and we would declare to each other that each of the croquettes on our plates were battleships that were about to go to war against each other.

Naturally when one of our battleships attacked the other person’s croquette, men on board the ships would die, and that’s where the ketchup came into play. You see, as soon as we decided that one of the battleships was hit by a cannon, we’d squeeze some ketchup onto the croquette, as if it were blood from the dead sailors.

The battle would continue as my brother and I discussed which ships were attacking and which were hit. Soon all the croquette-battleships were covered in blood, and then it was time for the ships to sink. This was accomplished by smashing the croquette flat with our forks to indicate a destroyed ship. And that’s how you eat a turkey croquette. You put ketchup on it and smash it flat. The ketchup makes them taste a little more tolerable, and thinking of them as battleships or pirate ships makes the process of eating them a little more fun. That is, it was torture for me to eat these things, and this process took some of the pain away.

And those are some of my memories of past Thanksgiving holidays. I have more memories, but I think I’ve already written enough for one post, so maybe I’ll write more about Thanksgiving next year. I hope you enjoyed reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing about them, but if not, oh well.

Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration premiered in 1987 on CBS. It is essentially a series of musical segments that are introduced by a couple of dinosaur hosts, Rex and Herb.

Each of the musical numbers is well done in their own right. While most of them feature traditional clay stop motion, some of them experiment with some different effects using clay and glass. Some of them are comical, some of them are emotional, some are peaceful, others are joyful. All of them are absolutely excellent.

I do want to comment briefly on my favorite musical number in the show. It is the segment featuring the song O Christmas Tree. The segment starts with two children placing ornaments on a Christmas tree. One of the ornaments is a little house. The camera zooms in on the house, and into the window. Inside, some ginger bread men are dancing around a Christmas tree. The camera then zooms in on an ornament on their tree, into another little house. We are introduced to another Christmas scene centered around a Christmas tree. The camera continues to zoom in on ornaments, showing each of the characters inside, and then finally zooms in on the star of the innermost tree, then zooms out to reveal the original kids that placed the first ornament, and their tree is now fully trimmed. It’s an absolutely amazing sequence, and really brings the joy of Christmas to me.

It brought me great joy as a child to watch this with my family on Christmas Eve night. I love it so much that I save it for Christmas Eve each year. In many ways for me Christmas ends as the final credit disappears off the screen. This film gives you that wonderful feeling of sitting in front of a live fireplace.

Well that ends my Holiday tradition for this year, and I just want to wish everyone a happy holiday. Now enough of this gooey show of emotion, I’ll be back to my usual writings and rants right away.