10 Xmas Songs That Don’t Make Me Want to Spit Acid In Your Face
There has never been a GOOD Xmas* song; each is a various shade of terrible. But some Xmas songs are less terrible than others. Today, we will dive right in and talk about 10 Xmas songs that quell my desire for ingesting hydrochloric acid and emitting it into your face.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, Xmas is terrible. If you are a child or a parent, the holiday can be perfectly magical. The rest of us have to deal with hearing your obnoxious children screeching novelty versions of “Jingle Bells” for two months out of the year. Mariah Carey’s terrible Christmas record has haunted me every December for the last TWENTY YEARS. We are completely inundated by grotesque consumerism, soundtracked by migraine-inducing holiday-specific pablum. It’s enough to make a man (me) want to pick up a beaker full of acid, fill his mouth, and spew the contents directly into your face. Thankfully, there are a small handful of Xmas songs that dampen that desire.
*Why do I keep douche-illy writing out “Xmas” instead of Christmas? Because mouth-breathing idiots in America are correct, for once. There IS a war on Christmas and it is being waged by angry bloggers. Fight me, Fox & Friends.
10. GWAR – Stripper Christmas Summer Weekend
Because it was only released on European versions of Bloody Pit of Horror, “Stripper Christmas Summer Weekend” probably isn’t a song you’ll ever hear coming from the gaping maw of soulless Xmas carollers. It is unfortunate, because if a Xmas caroler attempts to croak “Deck the Halls” in my generally vicinity, I will belch acid directly into his or her face and also yours. If that Xmas caroler instead sang “Stripper Christmas Summer Weekend”, I would gently set down my beaker of acid and offer him or her eggnog from my clearly marked “NON-ACID” beaker.
9. Blink 182 – I Won’t Be Home for Christmas
Ugh. I’ll be honest, I enjoyed this one quite a bit more when I was a 15-year-old shithead, but the line “Outside the carolers start to sing/I can’t describe the joy they bring/Because joy is something they don’t bring me” is still pretty clever. If I were to hear this song at the grocery store, or a bar, or at a social event, I would not be overcome with the urge to spit acid directly into your face.
8. Ramones – Merry Christmas ( I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)
Mid-to-late-80s-era Ramones is the best era of Ramones. This is a true fact because I wrote it down and published it on the Internet. From now on, if you type “What is the best era of The Ramones?” into Google, the search engine’s text robots will crawl through this site and tell you that the mid-to-late-80s-era was the best era of Ramones. Anyway, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” is a perfectly OK song, and it briefly abates my desire to spit acid into your face.
7. The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping
“Christmas Wrapping” really gets what the holiday is all about for a single, child-less adult: being consumed by worry, wanting to be left alone, and hoping you can have sex with a stranger you see at the grocery store. If you were to play this song in my presence, I would likely be too distracted by the catchy saxophone melody to even remember where I left my beaker of acid that I keep on hand specifically for spitting into your face.
6. Mele Kalikimaka – Bing Crosby
The dark is terrible. The cold is terrible. Frozen precipitation is especially terrible. It all makes me want to fill my mouth cavity with burning acid, taste my own tongue disintegrating to goo in my skull, and spray the rotten concoction of stinging chemicals and burning flesh directly into your face. Bing Crosby knew these things, so he took advantage of American fascination with Hawaiian culture and released “Mele Kalikimaka”, an Xmas song that celebrates the joy of a sunny, hellfrost-free December 25th. Crosby eschews cursed bells and glockenspeils for slack-key guitar and, thanks to Christmas Vacation, side-boob. It is an acceptable Xmas song.
5. Clarence Carter – Back Door Santa
Clarence Carter is a blind musician that has been releasing music all about fuckin’ since the 1960s. In “Back Door Santa”, Clarence Carter makes it explicitly clear that he WILL bang your mother this Xmas. For this reason, I do not feel any sharp desire to harm my own body irreparably by launching acid from my own mouth into your face.
4. Julian Casablancas & The Roots – I Wish It Was Christmas Today
https://vimeo.com/82542924
Reprising a 15-year old Saturday Night Live skit, “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” as performed by The Roots featuring The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas, is surprisingly fun and catchy. Jimmy Fallon, a worthy acid-spitting target if there ever was one, somehow does not ruin this song.
3. Otis Redding – Merry Christmas Baby
Otis Redding died far too soon. By his death at the age of 26, he had recorded dozens of stone-cold R&B classics including “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and “Knock on Wood”. By sheer virtue of Being Otis Redding, “Merry Christmas Baby” belongs on any list of songs meant to pacify a clearly out of control monster with access to highly corrosive acid, your face, and an apparent lack of concern for his own well being.
2. The Kinks – Father Christmas
The most punk Xmas tune of all time was released back in 1978. The Kinks threatened to beat the shit out of a department store Santa unless he gave up the fuckin’ cash (And also a job for their father. And a machine gun). The mental image of Ray and Dave Davies pummeling a fat, white-haired impostor in the name of socioeconomic justice lessens my desire to quaff acid and allow it to tear through my jaw like a hot knife through butter, before forcefully ejecting the boiling spew from my ruined skull into your horrified face.
1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Charlie Brown Christmas
I… I don’t know what it is about this Vince Guaraldi composition… There’s something here that… makes me… feel things. I’m overcome with emotions like “good will” and “non-desire to disfigure my own face to a fatal degree so that I may spitefully see your own face covered in corrosive chemicals before I slip from consciousness forever”. This, and other tracks the Vince Guaraldi Trio put together for 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, remind me of the potential mankind has to come together, putting aside crass commercialism, to make the world a better place for everyone this Christmas. Listening to “Christmas Time is Here” has made me put down my clearly marked “ACID” beaker while I go think about things for a little while.
