SILENT NIGHT . . . PLEASE!

Ten Christmas carols that could go away–far away–without causing me to shed a tear:

• “Carol of the Bells”: “Hark hear the bells/Drive you insane/Ringing like mad/Inside your brain/The same four notes/ninety-four times/Until your ear-/drums ring like chimes/Music professors/call the weird rhythm/a hemio-o-la/Not realizing that no one cares/They’d prefer being eaten by bears/To hearing this/Pathetic ’song’/From every store/All season looong . . .”
• “The Little Drummer Boy”: Maybe you like this song. Maybe you’ve never been a twelve-year-old male percussionist.
• “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”: Would this song even exist without grade-school orchestras? Or would it have been lost to the mists of time?
• “Sleigh Ride,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bells,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Let It Snow”: I’m counting these as one song because they all have the same problem: what do they have to do with Christmas?
• “The Holly and the Ivy”: A favorite of over-enunciating choirs everywhere, this song is a good argument that music from the medieval era is best left there.
• “Happy Holidays”: While I doubt anybody has recorded this song in 30 years, this early attempt at political correctness might as well be called “Best Wishes for an Appropriately Festive Multi-Celebratory Convergence Corridor.” However, it would be very hard to rhyme anything with that.
• “O Come O Come Emmanuel”: Beloved by liturgical apparatchiks who would deny Christians the privilege of singing Christmas carols during Advent because, well, this is the only Advent song anybody on the planet actually knows.
• “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”: I would contend that only a pastor can hate these songs with the appropriate intensity they deserve. Sets up the whole “Christmas as behavioral control” thing, allowing well-meaning parents to add blasphemy to the idolatry and covetousness they’re already instilling with the whole guy-in-the-red-suit mythos. But I can’t say anything about it, because it’s cute and they’re only little for a little while . . . which is true, but the idea that Christmas is a secular spend-and-consume-fest rather than a religious celebration seems to last forever–and the child really is father to the man.
• “O Christmas Tree”: Not that I was ever in danger of appreciating it, but Jim Varney pretty much ruined this song for me forever.
• “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”: Funny the first time I heard it; slightly amusing the next 14,342 times; now, it makes me want to gargle with warm eggnog until I lose consciousness.

A TERRIFYING REALIZATION

My gosh . . . we actually played Europe’s “The Final Countdown” in my high-school jazz band. And Mr. Mister’s (or is it Mister Mr? I can never remember) “Kyrie.” What, nobody could find a big-band chart for “West End Girls?”

TODAY’S DISCUSSION QUESTION

Of Frank Solich, Ron Zook, Ty Willingham, and Rick Neuheisel, who will get a second chance first? My money is actually on Zook–he’s too good of a recruiter, and evidence shows that, while he was in way over his head at Florida, he has potential to become a good coach. Both Illinois and Indiana need top-notch recruiters; Zook would be a good fit at one of those schools,