Bad Christmas Music 2009

A few years back I started a new holiday tradition of compiling a mix CD of bad Christmas Music. The search for previously unknown nativity lows is always exciting. Last year, a chance visit to a thrift store yielded three CDs containing some real gems, including one featured in this year's CD: "The Reindeer Shuffle." Discount retailers sometimes make helpful contributions as well, such as the supremely annoying CD "Kidzbop Christmas" (don't look for it; you will be turned into stone). Why "Bad" Christmas Music? Here is a quick analysis. Much of these songs are bad because they try to do something well but fail. One laughs at them, but in the laughter a trace of pity remains, a sort of "there-but-for-a-microphone-go-I" holiday spirit. At the karaoke bar they would have earned their applause, and maybe a beer. Not so with the top tier of trash; namely, the Christmas songs performed, or deformed, by today's top-rated recording artists: e.g. Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill who made the cut for this year's CD. For these singers we have no pity, only a kind of wordless fear no longer capable of being described in writing since the death of H. P Lovecraft. Behind these songs lurks the invisible hand of way too much money. A children's choir singing Brian Wilson's "Little St. Nick" (cf. Kidzbop) is pure silliness, soon forgotten, a mere curiosity to be trotted out at parties when conversation lags, but Aguilera, backed by professionals, wailing and grunting her way through "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" -- this track alone could destroy what is left of Western civilization. Keep Christina out of Christmas is my motto.