Christmas Tunes They Are A-Changing 

In case you haven’t been grocery shopping since October, it’s Mariah Carey season. We used to call it Christmas season, but since 2003 the official start of the holidays is when you hear “All I Want For Christmas” somewhere completely un-Christmasy, like during your annual prostate exam. 

Nobody’s quite sure how Mariah Carey took over Jesus’ birthday party like a 4-year-old with divorced parents. Some like to point to a scene in the movie Love Actually, where a little girl sings the song to her grade school crush, who wisely returns her affection by picking his nose. Though the smart money says it has something to do with ex-husband Tommy Mottola’s “business associates.” (You never heard this from us!) 

Mariah’s rise to the Queen of Christmas isn’t all that unexpected, though. After all, pop stars have been taking over the Christmas music game for years. Wham! is now an irreplaceable part of the holiday season, probably because they’re the only band that ends with an exclamation point. Also, because “Last Christmas” has given us another great holiday tradition—sitting around the table after dinner, trying to name the other guy in Wham! 

Bruce Springsteen got in on the Christmas music craze with his version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” It might have reached Mariah’s status, too, if only the song didn’t sound like a drunk mall Santa trying to do an impression of Bruce Springsteen during Tuesday night karaoke at Applebee’s. 

Mariah and Bruce and George and that other guy’s success now have everybody rushing to cash in on Christmas songs. In Norway, bands whose songs usually include at least four lines proclaiming, “Hail Satan, King of Darkness” are recording Scandinavian metal versions of “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” When Beyonce heard that dreidels were made of clay, she immediately planned an album of Hanukkah songs. Not because she’s Jewish, but because she wanted to smash a bunch of dreidels in a music video, leading most women under 30 to believe Hanukkah is actually about Jay-Z cheating at P. Diddy’s “Freak Off” parties. 

Maybe celebrity Christmas music is taking over because the old-timey Christmas songs just don’t hold up. Take “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” There has not been one documented case of wassailing since 1896, and the last person who could explain what wassailing meant died in the 1970s. 

“Jingle Bells” isn’t any less dated. We see all kinds of ridiculous things on the road during the holidays, but there is a severe lack of one-horse open sleighs. Broken down Lexus? Sure. But try rhyming that with anything in “Jingle Bells” without a hefty fine from the FCC. 

Even the Christmas songs that aren’t dated are like Hans Christian Andersen’s stories with a catchier hook. Imagine you told your 10-year-old that he’d make a new friend this Christmas, and then one day he’d walk outside to play with that friend and find he’d been reduced to a top hat, a corncob pipe, and a button. The only thing on his Christmas list for the next 25 years would be therapy. 

Same thing with “Rudolph,” a song that teaches us that being different is OK, as long as you’re willing to work overtime on Christmas. Otherwise, the boss will look the other way while the other reindeer take turns giving you a swirlie. 

Let’s not even get into “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” alternately known as “Christmas at Bill Cosby’s.” 

Maybe the rise of Mariah Carey is just a sign of the times, and rather than meltable friends, mutant reindeer, and overly aggressive party hosts, all we really want for Christmas is someone to love. And, to finally remember the name of that other guy in Wham!