Little kids singing almost anything is awesome. Nothing will reduce me to a little puddle of tears faster than kids singing Christmas carols of any kind.
One of my favorite Christmas albums is Mojo Nixon & the Toadliquors Horny Holidays. The intro to this never fails to crack me up, even 20 years later. Happy birthday to you, You woodworking Jew...
Before there was South Park and before there was YouTube, people shared stuff via VHS, and this is what got shared: Seems apropos for this thread.
Fair enough. As far as why that particular bugs me so much, I think it's that kids don't need "cutesy" advice from adults on how be endearing. They do just fine without our help. PS My Mom was a grade school music teacher for years.
First saw this in 1996. A friend from college got a copy sent to him from somebody at home (NYC) and showed it to me. I was on the floor. Seemed like most people on campus had it within the next 2 weeks.
I add "cha-cha-cha" to the end of every song. And she's buying a stairway to heaven...... Cha-cha-cha.
Back in the dark ages of the internet I was the A&E editor for my college newspaper and I was able to find it on-line in 1997. The review I wrote was my most responded-to piece for the paper in my four years.
Depending on how you dance around said pole, it could be a very merry Christmas in the Nutter household...
I was kind of fortunate. We don't have TV, which means my kids never saw commercials telling them what they should want for Christmas. Their wish lists would be 2 or 3 things. And Grandad got the best item to give them, Aunt Amy second best, Santa got third pick, leaving me and their mother to give them their least desired presents.
Only thing that bothers me more than the music is that damn tinsel, as I too find it very distracting.
Unfortunately, irony is lost on my son. While he's never watched About a Boy, he loves Santa's Super Sleigh...
I always sing it the cutesy way, but I only use the line "like Monopoly". For example: Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw him, you would even say it glows (Like Monopoly!) There are Advent-time songs awaiting Jesus and then Christmas songs celebrating the birth of Jesus, and you have after-Christmas stuff all the way through to Candlemas. One of my favorite Christmas-time hymns is "We Three Kings", which is about the wise men who came some time after Jesus was born and I believe is celebrated as part of Epiphany two weeks after Christmas. The original American War on Christmas was the Protestant war on all these Catholic holidays around this time. The weapon they used was pushing the consumerist elements of the holiday and turning it into a universal secularish holiday. They are now reaping what they sowed.
I used to know how to play "We Three Kings" and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" on a recorder. My SO is traveling so I should dig out my recorder and torture the cat's ears for a little while.
I am always going to wage war on people who claim this ages-old celebration time before a long winter was stolen from them, when in reality they stole it from many others to bogusly celebrate the birthday of some dude born about 4 or 5 months later than December.