Does it make any sense to you that in Do You Hear What I Hear? when they talk about a child shivering in the cold, the best answer is to bring him silver and gold? I don’t know how you raised your kids, but if my daughters were cold, I’d cuddle them or bring them a blanket or two. Storing treasure around them is just bad parenting.
I always thought it was a bit odd that Burl Ives, in Holly Jolly Christmas, made a provision for those who weren’t listening — at first — to his song. So here, I offer my own version:
We had a debate, soon before Dad died, about Up On The Housetop. I was certain the phrase was “Up on the housetop reindeer paws …” He said I was silly and that reindeer have hooves, not paws, so obviously it was “reindeer pause.” We didn’t have search engines, smart phones or even the Web back then, but if we did, Dad would’ve been proven right. Every time I hear that song, I score one for my own Father Christmas.
Speaking of Google, I was shocked when I looked up Oh Tannenbaum. Did you know there was an Operation Tannenbaum during World War II? It was a planned, then canceled invasion of neutral Switzerland by the Nazis. True story, at least according to the always accurate internet.
You know marketing has gone a bit haywire when you look up the lyrics to Good King Wenceslas and you run across this banner-ad again and again: Catheters for every need, no out-of-pocket costs! The good king must’ve had a problem that the medical supply industry latched onto.
Certainly it’s not just me who misunderstood song lyrics. As a very young boy, I gleefully sang about dashing through the snow in a “one whore-soapin’ sleigh.” Not ever hearing the word “whore” before, I didn’t know enough to be embarassed by the song.
Now that I’m older and supposedly wiser, there are misunderstandings that I think I’ll just let lie. The song, Back Door Santa is chief among them.
No, I never fell into the Harold Angel trap but I did honestly think Rudolph would go down in his story. I had and still have no idea who the old man is whose hat we’re supposed to put a ha’ penny into. Does the real Parson Brown bear any resemblance to a snowman? Does Parson White? And finally, does figgy pudding sound as disgusting to you as it does to me?
Thanks for reading,
Round John Virgin.