Here we are again, in the midst of the Christmas season (which now, in accordance with Federal law, begins in late July).  And of course with Christmas comes the inevitable and annual deluge of Christmas songs, some of them good (and therefore not at all funny to write about), and many of them totally lame.  Which brings us, of course, to today’s subject.  After all, while there are a lot of holiday classics that everyone loves even though they don’t make any sense at all, there are a favored few even among those that make you wonder what kind of festive seasonal hallucinogenic substances they guys who wrote them were smoking at the time.  So sit back, pour yourself a glass of egg nog (or one of your other fine nogs, such as corn nog, beef nog, white rhinoceros nog, or Nog from Deep Space 9), and get ready to ponder a few Christmas imponderables.

            First, let’s start with everybody’s favorite Christmas ditty that happens to be sung by giant fictional rodents, the Chipmunk Christmas Song.  Now, the song itself makes enough sense when you listen to it (other than Theodore’s unaccountable predilection towards hula hoops), but therein doth not the true mystery lie.  The real question here is what on Earth David Seville was thinking when he came up with the whole chipmunk deal.  I mean, was he just having no luck breaking into the music industry by himself, and one of his friends said, “Hey Dave, why don’t you pretend to be a trio of giant ground squirrels singing about Christmas?  I’m sure you could earn a decent living for the rest of your life off of that!”?  Or was it supposed to be a record about three normal guys singing about Christmas and one guy with a really deep voice, but someone at RCA accidentally labeled it as a 78 instead of a 33.  Or does it all have something to do with David Seville’s friend the witch Doctor?  Either way, the scary thing isn’t so much that the demented imagination of David Seville came up with an idea to have enormous rats wearing body stockings sing Christmas songs as much as the fact that enough people loved it that we still listen to it today.

            Next we get to the old Holiday standby, Jingle Bells.  Now, I know that everyone loves this song (particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made that motion picture adaptation a few years back), but I’ve just never gotten the point of a song fraught with such pointless negativity and defeatism.  I mean, so what if Batman smells?  He spends all night out beating up freaks and psychos to keep Gotham safe; are we really in a position to judge him for being a little on the rank side of things?  And Robin, could he really have laid an egg?  It seems clear to me that whoever wrote this song failed to do even the most basic research concerning Batman and his ward.  Seriously folks, birds and reptiles lay eggs, while Robin is a mammal, which means he has hair, is warm-blooded and bears live young (unless of course he’s a spiny anteater or a duck-billed platypus, which, aside from the occasional blurry and unsubstantiated photograph, I have no reason to believe).  Even if the author of the song already knew this, I have trouble taking anyone seriously who would so cavalierly disregard obvious rules of biology simply to make for more ready lyrical construction.  And then of course, we get to the questionable incident in which the Batmobile lost a wheel.  I don’t think I’m alone here when I say that there’s really no argument that the Batmobile has in fact, in numerous occasions, lost one or more wheels.  However, in light of the dangerous nature of Batman’s occupation, one can hardly blame him if his car takes a little damage now and then in the course of helping him to save the innocent.  And finally, so what if the Joker did actually get away?  Would you rather that Batman allowed some innocent city-dweller to perish just so that he could go catch the Joker?  I mean, isn’t Gotham City’s criminal justice and mental health system so hopelessly ill-run that even if Batman did forsake all to bring him in, the Joker would most likely just be back on the streets again in a matter of mere days.

            And finally, the somewhat more recent Christmas classic, Ice, Ice Baby, by Sir Vanilla Ice, Vice Reagent of Dorksville (not his actual title).  Honestly, I’ve never even gotten why everybody thinks this is such a great Christmas song anyhow.  Really, other than the repeated references to ice, babies, solving problems, and allowing the DJ to revolve it, this song has very little to do with any traditional celebration of Christmas that I’m familiar with.  I suppose that from a symbolic and metaphorical standpoint, one could theoretically make the case that Vanilla Ice is somehow representative of the often-mentioned “White Christmas” but that seems a slender hook indeed on which the hang the mighty hat of justice in this case (The Mighty Hat of Justice, let me hasten to add, would make a great name for a band, though not necessarily a Christmas one).  I really just have no idea whatsoever why my family insists on playing it pretty much continuously from Thanksgiving onwards this time of year.