The Twelve Most Hideous Christmas Carols Ever…

I am deliberately not going to include bad renditions of otherwise beautiful- or at least listenable songs. N0 way am I going to force myself to listen to the nauseating repertoire of every Pop Tart’s version of the classics.

I am not going to single out particularly religious songs because I am an atheist, neither am I going to be easy on a melody because it is secular.

These are just songs that are irredeemably awful. Songs that no singer or band could ever make tolerable. Songs that make me leap for the radio dial faster than I do when rap music comes on- which is saying something.

These musical abominations are all so horrific, I am not even going to try to order them by rank- because they are all rank. So in no particular order, here goes:

I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas

The whining obnoxious ear-drilling notes that distinguish this song are legitimately obtained, as it was in fact sung by a ten-year-old girl from my own home state. This nauseous ditty managed to make it to the top of the Billboard charts, as well as get an actual hippo donated to the OKC zoo. Even this laudable goal is not enough to redeem it however. It is truly awful. See if you can stomach the entire thing. I dare you!

The Christmas Shoes

There needs to be a warning, or at the very least a mood-elevator passed out to the unwary listener who has not yet heard the doleful lyrics of this holiday dirge. It starts out harmlessly enough, as we experience the tale as told through the eyes of a shopper who has to wait in line behind a dirty little kid who wants to buy something with a pile of change. We’ve all been there.

When the kid turns out to be short a little money, he turns to the shopper and asks if he’d buy the shoes for him. Why? Because his momma is in the hospital dying of cancer and he wants her to look pretty in case she has to meet Jesus tonight!

You’ll either be bawling or barfing at the mawkish sentiment before he song’s end. Yet this subject seems to be a favorite among Lifetime channel-watching teddy bear-collecting Jesus Jumpers. It has become so popular in fact that it has been made into both a book, and a feature length movie– starring ROB LOWE no less!

Little Drummer Boy

Where in the scheme of anything Christmas- including the nativity- could this have originated? If I were Mary, and had just squeezed out a baby in a dirty stable and some brat came pounding away on his drums I’d be asking my Supernatural Sky-Husband to strike him dead.

Not even the coolness of David Bowie can rescue this repetitively wretched aural torture, though he did try. There is not a single version that is tolerable. Especially not this one.

All I Want For Christmas Is my Two Front Teeth

I like little kids as much as the next person. Probably more. But off-key lisping singing is only cute if the kid is your own. And sometimes not even then. See how long you can listen to this inbred, yet overplayed version! (Keep pointy objects far from your ears just in case)

Do They Know It’s Christmas

Even the otherwise stellar career songwriter Bob Geldof cringes with shame that he ever touched this awful song. It isn’t enough to feel guilty at your own overindulgence during the holidays, but this celebrity-rich plea for money for the starving kids in (Africa? Ethiopia?) makes me wish they’d saved the production costs and just mailed those starving kids a check. Instead we have to listen to the sentimental preachiness year after year. 

What the hell is that line, “And tonight Thank God it’s them, instead of you” supposed to to mean? This song of shadenfreude? Sickening. If you can stand it, you might watch if only to enjoy the video flashback to the 80’s.

The Christmas Song (Alvin and the Chipmunks)

Yet another novelty song.  This time it wasn’t enough to have an actual whiny youngster belt out the tune, but they manage to create an even more obnoxious, artificial voice for this nightmare song of hula hoops. The only way it could be worse is if it were hit with autotune…oh God I’ve said too much.

Must Be Santa

This preschool staple is supposed to be cute. It might even be, if it were only your child’s class singing it. But no, real singers have to get in on it. Yes it can get worse. Do yourself a favor and turn off the sound. The video isn’t that bad without the polka music.

Mary Did You Know

I have to admit, that as a ballad this does not actually have FAIL written on it, but the clincher for me is the refrain, “this child that you’ve delivered, will soon deliver you,” and “When you’ve kissed your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God.”  Way to downplay the role of the woman in the Judeo-Christian mythology, folks.

Wonderful Christmas Time

Oh Sir Paul, how far you have fallen since those glorious days as a Beatle. Either too senile or two lazy to write any more, you give us this piece of Christmas crap.  From the pasty synthesizer intro, to the falsetto doo-wop in the middle, to the monotonous conclusion, at no point does this make me feel anything but apathy for the season. A song- more appropriately a jingle-that does not, despite its overuse- beg for repetition. Ding-dong indeed.

I’m Gettin’ Nuttin For Christmas

Except maybe a dose of ritalin and a tranquilizer dart…

Santa Baby

My apologies to the lovely Eartha Kitt, but this song and its gold-digging materialism makes me sick. It is all about the “gimme”.  Plus it is just skanky to try to seduce Santa. There are some things that should remain in the province of children, not whores. Woman, put your Catwoman suit back on and empower yourself! That begging just isn’t dignified.

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

Strangely enough, I liked this song the first time I heard it, back in the “You might be a redneck” days when being a tooth-sucking inbred bohunk seemed cool.  I liked how the amateur pre-CSI country folk ascertained the culprit from  “incriminating Claus-marks on (Grandma’s) back”. But after about the third listen, the song just becomes so much noise. After the fiftieth you just want to go out and torch every trailer park you see.

Honorable mentions go to the appallingly stupid, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, “Frosty the Snowman,” and the king of all monotony, “Twelve Days of Christmas”.

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