Irresponsible Christmas Lyrics

Another posting for the HBDC Christmas Carnival...

So, I was down the pub last weekend, and I heard that God-awful “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” song. I always found it annoying, but it made me think of another Christmas song, one from my childhood, and prompted me to pen a concern...

When I first heard “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” I was too young to get the irony and hidden subtext; I took the thing at face value. And it was this, this, “child’s perspective” that presented a problem for me.

You see, my dad was a cop. He was an old-school hard-ass and carried a gun and a nightstick with him to and from work. So when the line the goes, “What a laugh it would have been, if Daddy had only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night,” I did not relate. In fact, I was pretty sure that if my father saw my mother sucking face with Saint Nick, the old man would have drawn his revolver and blown the jolly one to Kingdom Come, (or, at very least, done a dance on bearded face with his baton!)

What’s the connection? GLAD YOU ASKED!!! I think it is time for Christmas songs to be a bit more responsible, lyrics-wise! I always harbored an image of Santa as a home-wrecking playboy slipping into houses and helping himself to other men’s “cookies and milk,” so to speak. When I heard the newer Christmas song, even though when it came out I was old enough to know it was a tongue-in-cheek tune, I realized that there might be some child who heard it and thinks Father Christmas pulled a hit and run fatality!

It is time that we stop the flagrant abuse of lyrical content in Christmas Songs! We are scarring our children's images of Saint Nick. This is our damned legacy, for pity’s sake!!!

Thank you. Soap box is closed.