Christmas music needn’t be horrific
➧ ONE OF THE inescapable realities of Christmas is that one person’s tinsel is another’s trash.
Unless, of course, you’re talking the great John Waters, who quite rightly believes nothing is more worthy of one’s adulation than insanely gaudy trash. Like, for example, a shit-ton of tinsel, preferably covering every square inch of the plastic Christmas tree.
A lot of people hate it, and quite understandably.
There are many things in this world that aren’t right—Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” ranking as the most popular seasonal song of the past three decades being at the top of the list.
Equally offensive is how, right around the time pumpkins are being carved for Halloween, stores across North America tend to shift focus. Hands up if you’ve walked into Shoppers Drug Mart or Walmart looking for Pennywise-the-Clown-brand greasepaint only to ask yourself why the fuck “Frosty the Snowman” is playing on the sound system.
For the better part of two solid months we’re bombarded by syrupyslick shit that makes Donny and Marie in Las Vegas seem like GG Allin covering the Plasmatics. Think Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe” and Wham!’s “Last Christmas”.
The insane thing is it doesn’t have to be that way. Christmas doesn’t start and end with the major-label likes of Ariana Grande, Pentatonix, Kenny Rogers, John McDermott, Mannheim Steamroller, Céline Dion, and Paul Anka.
Instead, thanks to the magic of Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal, you can cheaply make your own Christmas playlist, one that proves Christmas music can be greater than the year you got a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve bourbon.
There’s no reason to steer clear of everything that’s ever hit big on commercial radio—Bing Crosby remains essential listening for his impeccable retro appeal, as do the seasonal works of Burl Ives, the Rat Pack, Vince Guaraldi, and King Elvis Presley. A single spin of A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector will make you forget that nine out of 10 West Coast Decembers look like all but the last 10 minutes of Seven.
And then there’s the gold. If you can get 10 seconds into Sufjan Stevens’s “A Lumberback Christmas” without promising to take up the fiddle, you’re obviously dead inside.
Great starting points for unearthing the best of the season are compilation records. I’ll Stay ’Til After Christmas offers up an embarassment of Xmas treasures, the star on the tree being Parenthetical Girls’ dazzlingly weird “Festive Friends (Forever)”.
Want classy? Reach for Pink Martini’s gold-standard Joy to the World. Retro? Hop on the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Christmas Caravan.
And then there’s trashier-than-atinsel-loaded-fake-tree, which is to say greater than a Pink Flamingos/ Hairspray double bill. A John Waters Christmas contains everything from warped love letters to some kid born in a barn (Little Cindy’s “Happy Birthday Jesus”) to blue-streak rants against Santa (“Fatty Claus” by Rudolph & Gang).
Even better, it’s also proof that there’s something out there that will wash the stench of Mariah Carey off the most holy, and endless, of holiday seasons.