Just another #$@**&! yuletide song list

I hate carols, but I love unkempt, bedraggled and gloomy yuletide tunes. The kind that had too many beer, heartaches and stale sausages. Dreaming a way out of this bankrupt world with Christmas slowly slouching toward it — like the beast of Yeats and yore. Missing someone forever absent. Thinking of how less loathsome tomorrow would be. Singing with a doomed Karen Carpenter voice. Laughing, yes — albeit laughter without mirth. Death to Alvin and the Chipmunks. (Isn’t there a YouTube link promising “Chipmunks roasting on an open fire…”?) In short, not your usual Ray Conniff Singers Christmas Medley. Well, cowbells are optional. Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley is allowed, but let it rain Purple Snowflakes (Marvin Gaye).

(A digression: how many of us Filipinos have dashed through snow or built a snowman and named it “Parson Brown“? Probably only those who are gorging on barrels of pork and the blood of taxpayers and managed to procure expensive digs in the great US of A. But not me. Not you. Not we who are impaled to the achingly slow-grinding wheels of the shoddy Philippine economy and are keeping them in spin.)

The Pogues’ Fairtytale of New York has a setting that is as alien to most of us as Winter Wonderland. Even the time when the story takes place is distant, quite obscure. But the sadness of the song is universal. We can all relate one way or another. Shane MacGowan sings it as if it were his last song before meeting God, a wino with a bottle wrapped in brown paper staring at the Christmas tree on Rockefeller Center. Kirsty MacColl, who would die years later in a boating accident, sings like an angel. The call-and-response is lilting:

“I could have been someone/Well so could anyone/You took my dreams from me/When I first found you…”

Shane the drunken narrator goes on, “I kept them with me babe/I put them with my own/Can´t make it out alone/I´ve built my dreams around you.”

You could just imagine the Shane and Kirsty (or yourself and a lover) slowly waltzing away as the world is going to hell. As the policemen from the N.Y.P.D. are singing. Oh, and the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day.    

Isn’t that redemptive? Just like Tom Waits’ Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis. An epistolary epiphany written by a streetwalker living in a squat right above a dirty bookstore, just within earshot of a trombone-playing old man. I am still waiting for my Christmas Card from a GRO in Mabini.

The humor of Jethro Tull’s A Christmas Song is as black as Sylvia Plath’s oven.  The song goes, “So how can you laugh when your own mother’s hungry/And how can you smile when the reasons for smiling are wrong?/And if I just messed up your thoughtless pleasures/Remember, if you wish, this is just a Christmas song.” Such a sourpuss Ian Anderson is. Don’t you wish he was just singing Aqualung (quoted hilariously by Will Ferrell in Anchorman) with his ubiquitous flute? But, mind you, in the rest of the band’s Christmas album, Ian sings about weathercocks and solstice bells. 

Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody deserves a nod here just because it was played during the office Christmas party in The Office UK Christmas Special, one of the best TV specials. Ever. Right up there with The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, whose gothic, shambolic trilogy-in-one take on the holidays is must-see TV — along with the entire third season. In the same league as Extras Christmas Special. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s genre-bending sit-com about an office in Slough is pure genius. At the party feat. DJ Keith is where Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis) finally leaves her boyfriend to be with Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman). If you’re close to tearing up, just rewind to David Brent (Gervais) doing the crab dance in front of his ex-officemates.

Two yuletide songs about peace that I adore: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas (War is Over) and The Ramones’ Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight). That most of the protagonists in these songs have already joined the Choir Invisible makes these tunes all the more poignant. Anyway, life is temporary. Rock ‘n’ roll is forever!

If by the 26th, you’re feeling sauced out of your head with all the mixed emotions conjured up by Tom Waits, the Flaming Lips, Jethro Tull, et al. Or by listening to the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree, Mother They’re Burning Big Louie for the first time. (What about Robin Laing’s The Man That Slits The Turkey’s Throat At Christmas) Time to ease up on the self-flagellation.

Torment is over.

But there’s no joy in Mudville.

Valentine is slowly slouching toward you.