Hello hello. Happy Holidays, which I wish earnestly. Not everybody celebrates Christmas, but nobody is clear from its tornado of consumerism and reliculous traditions. Stores get crowded, traffic gets worse and everywhere you go, there it is, again: Xmas music, melodious browbeating of JESUS, BUY, CHRIST, PAY, LORD and so on. My promise to you: this is the first and last LDB reference. And last religious reference, which is totally appropriate. Xmas music can get very, very secular and there’s really some dynamite numbers out there. Let’s get to them.

But first, one last religious reference:

The LDB promise remains. [Raises right hand, puts left hand over stapler] I swer.

Folks I respect, including summa youse and my hipper than a coccyx brother-in-law, rave about Fairytale of New York

Uf. It’s a gut punch. And beautiful. The nostalgia gets thick for me, but I love any song with recriminations and very personal insults.

Keeping it melancholy, and adding guilt-trippin’, it’s Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Xmas”

I like the melody and it’s an 80s Exhibit still with star power. Bono’s scream was a go-to Bill Simmons joke, which kept the song in my head during the early 00s. Simmons, like the 80s, will never go away.

Getting to guilt-free, totally harmless territory, “White Christmas”:

Although, personally, I may not want all my Christmases to be white on account of whaaaaa?!

Listen, I cannot, and will not, commit to white Christmases exclusively. Pfft, green and red baybeh! Those are Xmas colors smfh.

A song that I like, A LOT, it’s Wham!’s “Last Chr—”

[gets smacked by mitre]

Sorry Holiness, that was a righteous smackdown last night.

I will say this though: save some tears, give It to someone special.

There’s plenty of melancholy and nostalgia in Xmas music, another reminder that seasonal affective disorder is real. And that emotional manipulation is hella profitable, duh. On that line, I like a song that is just about the gifts part of Christmas. This is my favorite version:

Incidentally, I had the McKenzie’s Great White Album on cassette. That was a brag-brag, ok? I like being old. Age gives the best vantage point to look down on the expanding universe of dumbfucks. And AND, society expects olds to be ornery—win win!

Anyway, Feliz Navidad.

I mean the song, I ain’t going nowhere. Yet.

Down here in Puerto Rico, Feliz Navidad is my version of The Challenge song:

Feliz Navidad is a song I used to hate from the bottom, of my heeeeaaaaart, because it consists of about 20 words repeated over and over. But as a recovering impatient, I have learned to encapsulate pet peeves and not let them fester into full neuroses that send one into a days-long brooding hole. Like this, except substitute No Guns to Lotta Feliz Navidad:

The Spanish part wishes you, literally: Happy Christmas fa fa faaaa Happy Christmas fa fa faaaa Happy Christmas, prosperous New Year and happiness fa fa fa fafafa fa. You gotta admit, for earworms, that’s a lotta mirth–with “prosperous” doing heavy lifting in Protestant markets. Plus, it’s sung by José Feliciano, just a wonderful guy and great musician. Bears repeating: Feliciano performed AND was a plot point in Fargo (1996).

Puerto Rican Xmas music focuses on what makes the season happy. Sure, nostalgia, melancholy and [grits teeth] Catholic propaganda are part of it. But the most popular December-January seasonal music focuses on: drink, food, dancing, and partying. First example, Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón

Si se quema el monte, déjalo quemar. Que ya estamos en tragos, y nos falta na’. Basically, farmers singing if the hill is burning let it burn; we’ve been drinking and we have everything. The guitar-like sound you hear is the cuatro, our twelve-strings national instrument. (Second national instrument: the amped subwoofer.) Here is Edwin Colón Zayas, playing the Beer Barrel Polka on cuatro, using as a slide a handle full of clandestine Crismas rum.

It’s pretty overt, the alcohol stuff for Xmas. “If you don’t give me a drink, I’ll cry”, that’s the chorus. If I’m not sick this Xmas, I will be like the monkey, from drink to drink—goes another chorus. That last one might need some explaining. Yes, that is a merengue number, which is outside the Boricua musical tradition. And that, down here, “palo” means “stick”, “tree”, and “stiff drink”. So when a monkey goes from palo to palo well, you know…

Double entendre is big down here for Xmas music. Here, a farmer sings about a recently widowed old lady whose, uh, little farm has fallen into disrepair and he spends day–and night–keeping it spic and span.

This next number has a timeless message:

Live your life happily, that way you’ll live well. If you hurry, you die; if you don’t hurry as well. That’s the chorus.

And that is mostly our Xmas music: party, eat, tell sneaky dirty jokes, appreciate the simple life. And when it gets too much in your house, kick all them freeloaders out. Here’s the salsa Rolling Stones, El Gran Combo

Roast pork is the Christmas dish and this song has my favorite culinary lyrics: they fill their hands with pork, and then wipe with the curtains.

So while nostalgic and melancholy Xmas music is pervasive, I prefer that which is light, fun, and has sneaky dirty jokes. But that is not the whole universe of Xmas music. Here’s a dynamite song, by a band I love

That is punk as fuck. Have a wonderful day.

Banner via @SoLasepten, videos from YouTube.