Today we have booze, sugar, and Dean Martin, not necessarily in that order. See more after the jump:
10. Here We Come A-Wassailing: Wassail. Have you ever had wassail? You should try some wassail. No, don't just sit there nodding your head at me, go out and find some wassail mix, get a bottle of red wine, and make some damn wassail. You can thank me later.
The song originates with the old English Christmas tradition of going from door to door, eating sweets and drinking hot mulled wine at each house. Until relatively recently, these roving bands of drunkards actually posed a threat to public order, which mean that Christmas was viewed with suspicion by more than a few officials. It was Charles Dickens, with A Christmas Carol and his subsequent Christmas writings that really pulled the holiday toward respectability.
The song is at its best when it's sung by a large, somewhat rowdy chorus, and is often Americanized as "Here We Come A-Caroling", which I think you'll agree is an offense against god and nature. Here's the U.S. Army Band and Chorus with their rendition:
9. Winter Wonderland: What's more romantic than walking through fresh snow, holding each other tight to ward off hypothermia, knowing there's a great big mug of hot chocolate and a slice of pumpkin pie waiting for you at the end of it all (hopefully you'll have all your digits left by then)? Nothing, that's what.
The song was written in 1937 by Felix Bernard and Richard Smith while the latter was being treated for Tuberculosis. It's been recorded by over 150 artists since then. Here's one of them:
8. Ding Dong Merrily on High: Remember yesterday when I mentioned that I was sucker for an extended Glooooooooooooria? Here's a great one. Actually, this whole song is great. For one thing, it includes the archaic verbs "swungen" and "sungen" in the same verse, and mentions the stages of the monastic day. It was written by George Woodward in 1924, and combined his two loves, archaic poetry and church bells. Here are the lyrics in their entirety, just so you can appreciate the insanity of it all:
Ding dong merrily on high, in heav'n the bells are ringing.
Ding dong merrily the sky is riv'n with angels singing.
Gloria, gloria, hosanna in excelsis.
E'en so here below below, let steeple bells be swungen,
and "Io, io, io!" by priest and people sungen.
Gloria, gloria, hosanna in excelsis.
May you beautifully rime your evetime song, ye singers.
Gloria, gloria, hosanna in excelsis.
Now, for a lot of these, I kind of hunt around for a version I like, without really any pre-conceived idea of what's going to end up in the blog. Not so here. This song is so over-the-top, it deserves an over-the-top performance, and for that I knew I had to turn to Roger Whittaker, with a big synthesizer backup and plenty of bells.
7. Marshmallow World: This one, along with "Winter Wonderland" and "Sleigh Ride" (which didn't make the list) form a kind of trinity of songs about having fun with your smoochems in the winter time. There's not a whole lot more too it, other than I think the lyrics are more clever than "Winter Wonderland" and it has a catchy tune. Here's Johnny Mathis's version, set to a medly of sometimes-appropriate clips from various Christmas movies:
6. The Holly and the Ivy: Anyone who took German at my high school knows that a lot of our current Christmas traditions, including decorating the tree and drinking heavily, are adaptations of much older Germanic pagan customs. The evangelizing church of the dark ages was trying to make the Christian option as easily understood as possible to its new converts, so it appropriated the older tradition's festivals and some of its practices. That's why Christmas coincides with the winter solstice, even though most scholars believe that Jesus was born in June.
This song, which you don't hear all that often these days, is a perfect example of that kind of syncreticism in action. It takes traditionally sacred plants of the Germanic (and therefore English) pagans and imbues them with Christian symbolism. All with a beautiful tune. It's a reminder that when we celebrate this, and many other holidays, we reach back into a past more distant than most of us even imagine, and connect with it in a very real, very tangible way.
This is another one where I'm partial to Roger Whittaker, so here he is.
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