B-Sides For X-Mas

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Captain Kangaroo, 1962 — Captain Kangaroo explains puberty to a fir tree. “Little fir tree, don’t cry so much/You’ll be a Christmas tree next year/You’ll grow so big/You’ll grow so stout/All your little twigs will soon branch out.” Ewww…

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Extreme, 1992 — Isn’t Extreme supposed to be a metal band? Has anyone heard an Extreme song that’s even remotely — in the hard rockin’ sense — extreme? No, these gentlemen are known for their softer side, and Christmas Time Again is no exception. It’s like More Than Words' home-schooled little sister, full of sentimental notions that completely miss the point, and occasionally tries to rhyme “time” with “time”. (Nuno, it doesn’t rhyme; it’s the same word.)

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Jimmy Osmond, 1976 — For my money, it just doesn’t get any better than thirteen-year-old Jimmy Osmond pleading with Santa not to bring him a sleigh for Christmas. See, there’s not enough snow and ice in Los Angeles — where Jimmy Osmond lived at the time — for a sleigh to be practical, or even useful. That’s all Jimmy’s saying. It just wouldn’t make sense, would it? A sleigh, in Los Angeles? Sacramento, maybe. Sure, it’s hardly the North Pole, but you’d be close enough to the mountains that you could just drive a few miles out of town — or get one of your eight siblings to drive you, in Jimmy’s case — to the country for the occasional sleigh ride. But not in Los Angeles. That’s just silly.

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Grandaddy, 2000 — The best part about this dead-pan farce of a Christmas tune is that you get the sense that Grandaddy really does admire Parsons’ work. Why else would they devote nearly three minutes of bone-dry sarcasm to him?

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Burl Ives, 1968 — A brown-nosing mouse wraps up a piece of cheese as a gift for Santa Claus, who names him “Santa Mouse,” and lets him hang out on Santa’s shoulder. Also, Burl Ives is completely insane.

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Paul Revere and the Raiders, 1967 — Arguably the biggest band to come out the northwest (if you ignore that whole grunge thing), Paul Revere and the Raiders made one corker of a Christmas album, with bizarre psychedelic rock punctuated by interludes from an authentic Salvation Army band. Rain, Sleet, Snow — a musing on the efficacy of the postal service — is somehow the centerpiece of the record, and it’s probably the only track that could hold its own on a best-of compilation. If you have the means, I recommend listening to this one while drunk and/or heavily sedated.

Part advent calendar, part dumping ground for all the weird and wonderful Christmas music I have accumulated. 100% Celine Dion-free, and that is a promise.

Tony! Toni! Toné!, 1990 — This is just embarrassing. It sounds like it could easily have been an outtake from some forgotten holiday special episode of A Different World, yanked at the last minute because the song was making people irritable. It’s surprisingly religious for an early-90s R&B Christmas song. But listen to how seamlessly one of the Tonys intermixes the sacred with the profane: “So this Christmas Eve/I’m gonna lay out by the tree/Me and my girlie sharin’ the Word/Ooh, you know what I mean…/[squealing girl]/Opening up the presents.” So the song sucks, but you gotta give the Tonys some credit for their skillful use of holiday innuendo.