Ch-ch-ch-ch-Chanukah

I thought that woman was Fergie for a minute.

Oy.

When I sang in the Verona-Cdear Grove chorus, we did a beautiful Hannukah song called "Light One Candle." Very melodic..

My favorite Christmas song: Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."

This one is certainly in my Christmas top five.

For a minor religious holiday that is now on par with Christmas, all I see is folks making jokes about it.

Unlike Passover, which IS significant and so deeply felt (one of my single best memories was when I was invited to a Seder), Chanukah is always brought up with a wink and a nod.

A wink and a nod that, along with the made up holiday of Kwanzaa, has pushed the evil, non-inclusive Christmas out the window and created the unsettling new American holiday of HOLIDAY.

(As in: "Have a Happy Holiday!" and Amazon's "12 days of Holiday...")

Well, at least Easter is safe (and don't get me started on that bunny!)

Doni's really talented. Go Doni!!! (friend of mine)

I love "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses.

A wink and a nod that, along with the made up holiday of Kwanzaa, has pushed the evil, non-inclusive Christmas out the window and created the unsettling new American holiday of HOLIDAY.

Yeah, when they switched the national holiday from the 25th to the first day of Hanukkah, I was really mad.

Silver Bells

MM,

I saw the 'Waitresses' @ CBGB in early 80's and they performed that tune. It's a great song, I love it too.

Phil Spector's Christmas Album is a gem.

MB, I hope you are alright.Has anyone class the dog??

I saw them at the now-defunct Hitsville!

jg,

Thanks, I'm fine. Going for my first vaccine today. I haven't called the shelter about the dog yet. I'll give them a call next week to see how the old guy is doing. The animal control officer took one look at him and told my wife that he didn't think anyone would claim him. He's pretty old, with bad hips and emaciated.
At least he's warm and getting fed and such.

"On Christmas night," when, as the Britsong puts it, "all Christians sing, to share the joy the angels bring....," that's my fave for sing-alongs.

Country music, however, is the only format which dares get at uncomfortable truths about the Christmas season: "Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy," "Santa Can't Stay," Dwight Yoakam's "Come on Christmas," Merle Haggard's utterly masterful "If We Make It Through December" and, greatest and most unsettlingly of all, "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk For Christmas." Only country music would, correctly, link domestic violence and family torment to the most joyous of holidays.

I also believe that the lead singer of The Waitresses has been dead for some years now, unfortunately, MellonBrush.

Ah... Mike,

Up against the wall, huh? Can't see the point?

I'm not claiming Christmas has been "replaced" (funny how that's what you read into my post), it's that the minor and made up holidays have been equated with it.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm listening.

BTW,

#2 "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (original version)

#1 "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Which features the HAPPIEST. CHRISTMAS. SONG. EVER:

"And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you"

"He's pretty old, with bad hips and emaciated."

So sad. Somebody probably just dumped him. :-(

Sorry you have to go through the shots and all, Mellon. But know that you tried to do a good thing.

(HAPPIEST. CHRISTMAS. LYRIC. EVER:)

When I was coming home from the Y this morning I saw a bicyclist on the ground on top of his crumpled bike with a pickup truck nosed in to him. This was at 7 AM in GR at Maolis and Midland Aves. There was a couple and their dog on their cell. I hit my Onstar emergency button and told them too. The poor guy was holding his head and looked pretty dazed. He wasn't wearing a helmet or reflective gear of course, otherwise the driver in the pick up might have seen him.

Good grief, can you imagine, heading off to work and then creaming some poor schmuck on his 100$ bike not 5 minutes from your house. What an awful way to start the day!

"There was a couple and their dog on their cell."

Gosh, it's amazing what they teach dogs today. :-)

Seriously, hope the guy is going to be OK.

An awful way to start the day indeed. I always feel bad when I see acccidents on the way to work thinking the poor schmucks thought they were heading out to a normal day.

MM, LOL!

Yeah really, he was sort of sitting up, but looked like he got hit pretty hard. Hopefully he doesn't have a fractured skull.

It boggles my mind when I see people on bicycles without helmets.

"funky Gold Menorah" -- hmmmm .... sounds familiar...I know! my husband used to walk around humming a funny hip hop tune called "funky Cold Medina" and i think that's what she's referencing here. it's cute, i like the little kid dancing in the middle of it.

Yes Cather, Patty Donahue from the Waitresses died back in the mid-90's. I actually lived for quite a while in the same Little Italy walkup as Billy Ficca, who played drums on that record (he was/is also the drummer for Television). The guy in the band who actually wrote Christmas Wrapping is Chris Butler, who happens to have also recorded what has to be the longest pop song ever recorded, The Devil Glitch. The full version of the song clocks in at almost 69 minutes, and believe it or not, manages to hold up from beginning to end surprisingly well.

I always thought that the longest pop song ever (well, 19th century German pop, anyway, although even German heavy metal efforts are pretty ponderous) is the score of Wagner's Die Miestersinger, complainerpuss. Clocks in at about 4.5 hours.

"Christmas Wrapping": so that's what that horrible song is called. (Just googled the lyrics.) That one drives me nuts above all others in lite-FM holiday rotation.

Favorites, in no particular order:

• "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24", Trans-Siberian Orchestra
  
• "Snoopy's Christmas", The Royal Guardsmen
  
• "My Little Drum", Vince Guaraldi (jazz cover of "The Little Drummer Boy" on the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack)
  
• And pretty much any hymn sung at Christmas Mass, top choices being "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear"
  

i like 'snoopy's christmas' too! the one i'm just really sick of simply because it is so overplayed is 'santa baby.' my favorite holiday song these days, though, is from the Stephen colbert special, "another Christmas Song" - it's not only funny, it has a great melody.

The worst song is "Christmas Shoes," the one about the little boy whose mother is dying and he wants to buy her a pretty pair of shoes to meet Jesus on Christmas Eve. One year, the radio stations played it OVER and OVER. It's so sad....Don't hear it as much, thank God.

I forgot about "Snoopy's Christmas", and I have the album too. Somewhere...

Love "Oh Night Devine", and anything by Bing Crosby.

If I manage to avoid-
"Do They Know It's Christmas",
"Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" &
"Feliz Navidad" during the season, it is a good Christmas.

Heinous!

For Hannukah, I like "Don't Let the Light Go Out" by Peter, Paul and Mary. It's the one contemporary song to find something deeper than latkes and dreidels in the holiday. But I do like latke and dreidel songs also, and recommend "Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hannukah" by the Klezmatics.

My favorite Christmas record is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", as sung by Jennifer Warnes. It's just beautiful.

this is better

The Christmas Song sung by Nat King Cole and White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby.

Those songs remind me of childhood Christmas memories.

It's about more than the music.
Christmas smells like pine needles, butter cookies, and pumpkin pie, while Chanukah smells like fried onions.

This ditty captures the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it--the commercial spirit.

Dashing through the mall
At Christmastime each year
To buy those special gifts
For those we hold so dear

Cash registers will ring
Making checkbooks light
What fun it is to shop and spend
All through the day and night

Oh...

To the mall, to the mall, to the mall we go
I really have to shop today, I hope it doesn't sno-ow
To the mall, to the mall, to the mall we go
Those shopping days are winding down, so get out there HO HO HO!

This is cute!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgFIZOkIC9o

Better yet, go here...

http://www.mesasoftware.com/merrychristmas.htm

...and listen to Bill Pinckney and Clyde McPhatter from 1953 knock "White Christmas" outta the box. (I think this is also on youtube.com but I can't get there from my work machine...)

"I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas"--love the line where the child worries that the hippo will eat him but then is reassured that the hippo is a "vegetarian."

For real Christmas music--anything by the King's College (Cambridge) Choir.

Favorite is "White Christmas" by The Drifters featuring Clyde McPhatter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w1VuTv3YyU

Conan, jinx!

The Drifters' version, with the unearthly singing of Clyde McPhatter, was sent to me as an animated e-card two years ago. So it's out there someplace.

You can also get it on a discount cd called "Doo-Wop Jingle Bells," which also has such gems as stuff by the Falcons (with Wilson Pickett as a member) and the Tune Weavers ("Merry, Merry Christmas, Baby"). Saddest such doo-wop Christmastime song is the old Skyliners single, "It's Just Another Lonely New Year's Eve." Don't play this one if you're even half-depressed round this time of year.

Wow, great minds, Looney.

The Drifters covered "White Christmas" in the early 1950's. Their recording of the song became #2 on Billboard's R&B charts in December 1954. In 1955, "White Christmas" became The Drifters' first single to be charted in the Hot 100. It was also the version used in "Home Alone" and "The Santa Clause." I know, I know -- I sound like Casey Kasem... :)>

"Don't Let the Light Go Out" by Peter, Paul and Mary." Is a great song Dr.

As a kid one of our annual holiday traditions was to go see Peter, Paul & Mary at Carnegie Hall, with the NY orchestra and the NY Choral society. Now when I hear almost anything by them I think about Christmas.

I also like The Marvelous Toy, every year they'd make the audience do all the toys sound effects and it was so much fun. I'm getting nostalgic thinking about it.

Nellie, I HATE that Christmas Shoes song!

I was just telling someone about it the other day and how I switch the station whenever it comes on!

George Winston's Winter is my personal fave. The whole album reminds me of Christmas.

Where's sleepydoubledouche's incendiary anti jewish comment? A douche by any other name.....

48 posts and 4 were about Hanukkah? I had to check back and see if this was your Open Thread? Nope.
So, okay we are discussing Christmas song on the Hanukkah thread.
I like The Little Drummer Boy and Santa Claus is comming tonight!
The Ronettes Christmas Album is the absolute greatest. Phil Spector was a master at music.
I also like Midnight mass. I was invited once & went. Very beautiful!!!
Well I'm looking forward to Hanukkah and trying to figure out what my wife & son bought me. Ithink it's a big powerful shop vac.
(A most romantic gift!)
HAPPY HANUKKAH !!!!