The NC Double Scrooge: Entertainment Division
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on December 10, 2010 – 11:43 AM101 Comments
“How many people do you think Keckler and Bunting offended with this poll? Show us with your hands.”
Today’s poll focuses on all manner of media disappointments: Christmas movies you’ve never really gotten, songs you can’t escape from, the abomination that is fruitcake “fruit,” and what happens when people come to church tipsy.
You won’t see specific songs or Christmas specials here, but fear not, our Grinchy friends. Each of those categories gets its very own poll, and Bunting for one hopes that someone throws the Little Drummer Boy a crunchy beating.
Questions? Skim this. And yes, we will consider write-in votes for “the ‘Philadelphians booing Santa‘ story.”
NC Double Scrooge, Entertainment Division: Please Pick The Three (3) WORST
- The alleged "War On Christmas" annually fabricated by conservatives (19%, 747 Votes)
- Christmas commercials, especially 1) jewelry; 2) red-ribboned cars; 3) Folgers' incestuous "brother comes home" spots; 4) "I can't seem to forget yooooou -- your Windsong stays on my miiiind" (16%, 623 Votes)
- Inescapable Christmas music everywhere -- the deli, the mall, every restaurant and Starbucks, the salon, on hold (13%, 524 Votes)
- Sexxxxy Santas, elves, reindeer, and any other attempt to stripperize the holidays (9%, 363 Votes)
- Articles harassing you about keeping holiday weight off before the holidays even start (8%, 316 Votes)
- Fruitcake, home of the most disgusting fake fruit on earth (4%, 157 Votes)
- Advent calendars that contain shitty chocolate that tastes like the cardboard they're wrapped in (TRADER JOE'S!) (3%, 122 Votes)
- Christmas specials and movies that haven't aged well/are overrated (3%, 108 Votes)
- Exhausted Festivus references (2%, 94 Votes)
- Politically correct children's "winter" pageants (2%, 90 Votes)
- Very Special Holiday Episodes (2%, 89 Votes)
- The holiday weight itself (2%, 87 Votes)
- Explaining your religious practices (or lack of same) ten billion times (2%, 87 Votes)
- Sucky Christmas cookies -- seriously, people, it's not that hard (2%, 75 Votes)
- Gross holiday foods you're supposed to like -- figgy pudding, Christmas pudding, fruitcake -- and the food-mag articles telling you it's time to start liking them, complete with recipes (2%, 73 Votes)
- Garrison Keillor thinking he can sing every damn carol in the -- wait, no, just Garrison Keillor (2%, 61 Votes)
- If Jim Morrison were alive today, he'd hang a Christmas ornament on it and get arrested all over again, NOT THAT ANYONE CARES SHUT UP JIM MORRISON (1%, 48 Votes)
- Holiday candy -- candy canes, ribbon candy, gelt -- and its omnipresence (1%, 47 Votes)
- Gingerbread-flavored everything (1%, 37 Votes)
- Advent calendars that fail to contain chocolate (1%, 35 Votes)
- California OUTLAWING the silver-ball things so you can't even TRY to break your family's teeth (1%, 35 Votes)
- Those little silver-ball things on Christmas cookies that break your teeth (1%, 26 Votes)
- "Creative" children's Christmas pageants -- just stick to the script, folks, it's not hard to find; look on any motel-room side table (1%, 24 Votes)
- The midnight service itself (we've got stockings to stuff; move the shit up to 10:30) (0%, 18 Votes)
- The Nutcracker (...hew) (0%, 16 Votes)
- Keckler and Bunting are as WASPy as actual wasps who live in a hive, so can we please get a ruling on the one true spelling of Chanukah? (0%, 16 Votes)
- Glurg (0%, 15 Votes)
- Caroling parties -- it's cold out, and nobody cares that you went to Juilliard (0%, 15 Votes)
- Amateur-eggnog fail (0%, 10 Votes)
- When baby Jesus screams his head off during the midnight service (0%, 9 Votes)
- Those assholes in the pew behind you who change the lyrics to Christmas hymns and then can't stop laughing at "Hark the Hare-Lipped Angels Sing" (also pronounced "Buntings") (we're jerks) (0%, 8 Votes)
- If you don't know what you're doing, don't attempt the Christmas goose (or at least deactivate the smoke alarms first) (0%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,350
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Tags: Keckler NC Double Scrooge shut up Jim Morrison winter-holiday agita
I voted for “inescapable Christmas music everywhere”. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the music in December, it’s more that it starts showing up right after Halloween now. I can do 2 weeks of Christmas music but 2 MONTHS of Christmas music is kinda ridiculous.
Daaaaamn, the “war on Christmas” pisses everyone off, it seems. I was hoping this would be the case, since I feel like the Nation is mostly comprised of My Kind of People and should this poll end up otherwise, I will have to re-think it. :)
For the record, I prefer “Hanukkah” but Hebrew sounds don’t translate exactly, which accounts for some of the wackier spellings one sees.
On the “creative” and “politically correct” Christmas pageants.
1. We had to sit through one held in Harvard’s Memorial Church where kids played Christiane Amanpour broadcasting on Christmas Eve from Afghanistan. Even more surreal is that we were sitting next to David Gergen and his mother.
2. Granted, it was 1977, but there was a Christmas pageant that began with some chick doing an interpretative dance with scarves and shit. She was supposed to be “Chaos.” When that aspect was over, I famously said: “WELL?!” really, really loudly. I was four, so I don’t remember this at all, but it’s part of Keckler family legend now.
I love Christmas carols. Love. But the ubiquity of crappy holiday muzak every damn where you go has turned my once-pure love into something else, something dark and dangerous. So now, I forcefully avoid all holiday music in every walk of life I can control, just so I can withstand all the stuff in walks I can’t control.
I once had to grab by the lapels a facilities manager in a place I used to work to beg him to limit holiday muzak to an hour a day. Because there may be 50 different covers of “Sleigh Bells” but they all sound THE SAME. And getting more than one per workday was just too much to bear.
@Rachel: That was a late addition; thanks to Trip for reminding us. If there is in fact a war on Christmas, Christmas seems to be winning handily every year — can we stop having this non-versation?
I had to laugh at the inclusion “Advent calendars that contain shitty chocolate that tastes like the cardboard they’re wrapped in (TRADER JOE’S!)” My husband works for Trader Joe’s and brings one of these home every year. I’m convinced that they get shipped to his store in May and sit in an overheated storage room until it’s time to pull them out at the end of November. He denies this is true. Whatever, they are GROSS!
Holy cow this was a hard list to winnow down. I was able to eliminate Garrison Keillor simply because it’s not the HOLIDAY that makes him annoying, he annoys me with his “singing” all year round.
I love carols and Xmas music and can’t get enough of it but one year in high school I worked at a store that played the Jackson 5 Xmas album over and over. I think I’m permanently scarred by hearing a young MJ sing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus that many times!
Also, my dad and I are apparently the only people on earth that like fruitcake. My grandma on my mom’s side adored him and would mail us fruitcake in coffee tins. He and I would sit and have tea and fruitcake and the taste of fruitcake makes me think of sitting at the table with my dad drinking tea out of my bunnykins cup. Awww…I’m gonna go call my dad now…
Oh dear God: http://bit.ly/hByCCa
Anyone who points me to an Advent calendar containing good, real, delicious dark chocolate gets enough karma to overcome a lifetime of anything. I’M SERIOUS. Someone find me a good one!
Like others here, the Inescapable Christmas Music gets right up my nose. (So does the War on Christmas, and I voted for that, too.)
I have a perhaps larger than normal capacity for listening to music over and over and over again, but I also know that if you want something to feel special, it has to be rare and contained to a limited period. That’s Christmas music, for me. I’m “happy” to hear it in stores or the mall during Advent, basically (if I am so foolish as to go into a mall during December), but that’s it.
In the space of the last 5 years, I ditched at least two radio stations that I’d been using for “clock-radio setting wake-up plus morning routine listening” because they insisted on starting up the Christmas music (in one case, an All Christmas format) around Nov. 1st. Dude, NO.
(Despite my name, my birthday is, in fact, in June. If this list were personal, I would be adding “having to explain the lack of relationship between my name and the holidays eight skillion times when I was little”.)
I’m with Attica; I used to love listening to Christmas music, and now I can’t stand it. Though I would like to expand a bit on the option to inescapably bad Christmas music. That and Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. Again, used to love it, but now when I hear it I want to barf.
Every great once in a while I’ll hear a nice rendition of “Carol of the Bells”, but it’s always by accident.
Recently, my father has decided that all the major network people in charge of commercials can hear his incredibly loud protests from the couch in our living room. True, he is loud, but still.
This month, he is lobbing his hatred at Christmas car commercials, specifically the ones that put the car INSIDE the house: “Honey, look! A Lexus! It’s a Christmas miracle! …and the next miracle will be paying to replace the exterior wall I destroyed to GET! IT! IN! HERE!”
I must be the only person who loves Christmas music all year round. Then again, even I groan at how soon the 24 hour stations start playing it.
@Stephanie – I considered that, but I still had to vote for (against?) Keillor. Somehow he’s worse this time of year.
On the other side of annoying Christmas music: customers who complain to the cashier (or other lowest-rung employee) about said Christmas music. By all means, commiserate, but I don’t make the choices, and at least you get to leave.
“Shut up Jim Morrison” is always high on my list for every occasion.
As spelling-freak Jew, I can say fairly confidently that the correct spelling of the holiday in question is…whatever. Any variation of H/Ch+a+n/nn+u+k/kk/q+a+end-h/no end-h, go crazy. Someone will always get pissy that you’ve spelled it wrong, and the appropriate response is therefore, “Whatever. It’s not an English word, and it contains Hebrew letters/sounds that don’t exist in English, so as long as it doesn’t contain some random T or R or B, stop bitching.”
I love Christmas music, too. But only in December (though I have been known to crank it up while I do my Thanksgiving cooking). Of course, I like to include a lot of classical and choral stuff to keep the saccharine factor way down.
But what I hate most are the Christmas commercials. Car and jewelry commercials are the worst offenders, but any of them that suggest that I can only show I love someone by buying useless crap makes me stabby. Man, I can’t wait to get to Florida to see the Publix commercials, those always make it better.
My main problem with Christmas music is that it starts so early. I don’t get Christmasy until December hits double digits (so basically, today) – I don’t want to hear Christmas music before then. By the time Christmas actually rolls around, I’m sick of all those songs.
Mark me down in the column of not liking It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve only seen it once, and I want those four hours of my life back.
I voted for the awful and repetitive task of explaining my religious practices. I am a non-practicing Jew married to a non-practicing Catholic, and I am exhausted by all the explaining I have to do — primarily about why I don’t celebrate Hanukkah (my vote for the spelling, though the phlegminess of Hebrew is tough to translate) and whether or not it’s “okay” that we have a non-religious-yet-festive tree in our house (it SMELLS NICE, people. And it totally takes up that vacant space in the corner. GEEZ).
Too hard! I needed at least 6 choices for this one!
Oh, that Windsong commercial. I am glad to see I’m not the only one who still sings it (but suspect I hold the record for frequency). Related item: How awesome is it that the Liz Taylor White Diamonds ad is still in rotation? Every year, I’m thrilled to see its return.
Also in the category of annoying holiday advertising is the Korbel campaign that started a couple of years ago. HATE.
Oh, the music. I love Christmas music, I do, but not on November 2nd, and not every waking moment for 2 plus months. And not from Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, or any other pop-tart who thinks she/he can belt out O Holy Night. You are not a soprano. Shut it.
I could have easily picked 6 items on this list, but the music is easily my number one, closely followed by explaining to my mother why I won’t go to church on Christmas Eve. Atheist. Look it up.
I am lucky that I didn’t know that fruitcake was yucky to most people till I was older. I was blessedly ignorant of candied cherries.
I had real fruitcake when I was a kid and at first didn’t understand why other people didn’t like dark, gingery cake studded with apricots, currents and nuts. Then I tasted what they meant by fruitcake and was sad.
I may make real fruitcake this year, and try drowning it in yummy booze of some kind.
My birthday is fairly near Christmas (early January), but I’d add the hilarious quips about my seasonally appropriate name and its unfortunate inclusion in songs, from having a Holly Jolly Christmas through decking the halls with balls of me, which is how I thought the song went when I was little.
@Tori, we need to get your dad and my dad together for Holiday Curmudgeonfest. My dad is a classical musician, and as soon as the Christmas music starts, so does the bitchery: “Jingle Bells isn’t a Christmas song?!?!! It’s a WINTER song, goddammit!!” “That’s not a song, it’s PIECE! If it doesn’t have lyrics, it isn’t sung, so it isn’t a SONG!!” “Real Christmas songs should are about the birth of JESUS, not getting TOYS!!!” “Why does everybody focus on Jesus being a BABY??!? He grew up to be a MAN, you know!!”
Sars, I will GLADLY join you on the Drummer Boy smackdown. I loathe that effing song, ever since the night I heard it once an hour for about 10 hours while pulling an all-nighter to meet a yearbook deadline the week before Christmas in the middle of final exams. I was already a bit frazzled, but the infernal rum-pa-pum-pummm pushed me over the edge. I went berzerk somewhere around 4 in the morning, shrieking about how if I heard that G-d effing song one more G-d effing time, I was going to take the G-d effing radio and throw it out the G-d effing window. Except for the part where the swearing wasn’t sanitized for your protection. The guys I was working with slowly backed away, afraid for their lives. To this day, I get a message every holiday season from one of them: Heard the Drummer Boy today, thought of you, ha-ha!
” * If Jim Morrison were alive today, he’d hang a Christmas ornament on it and get arrested all over again, NOT THAT ANYONE CARES SHUT UP JIM MORRISON”
Oh, thank you for adding this one, Sars! You made my day all over again!
I’m not voting for it though because I found 5 things I hate more. Now I have to choose 3 from those 5. It’s a regular Sophie’s Choice over here. A Sophie’s Choice of “Go AWAY, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!!/Political correctness craziness” proportions.
I have a friend named Merry. Good thing she has a sense of humor about these things. (Especially given that she got named that because her maiden name turned that into a giant pun.)
I thought of another one: Jewish characters forced to be hyped about Christmas on television. That is just weird.
@non-jolly Holly: I. Am. With. You. “Have I heard that one before? Only a JILLION TIMES. (you are not clever)”
(And I like my name, and also like the Christmassy / Solstice associations of my namesake. But the jokes are always about the stupider songs, anyway. Pheh.)
(See also: not Christmas related, but it was… Trying, growing up in the 70s when Hollie Hobby first came out. Hatred, loathing.)
HOW CAN MORE PEOPLE NOT HATE THE NUTCRACKER? Sorry about the yelling, but it’s the pits.
@Anlyn: Carol of the Meows. Guster. Totally worth your 99 cents on iTunes.
Meow-meow-meow-meow, meow-meow-meow-meow, meow-meow-meow-meow, meow-meow-meow-meow, repeat for 1:23 of pure awesome.
@Ericato – THIS. Does it have to be non-stop for 2 months? Even 6 weeks is too long! The year I waited tables between college and law school I heard the same whatever 15-30-100 songs OVER AND OVER AGAIN for the 6 weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years. Come New Years I was pretty much ready to go on a killing spree just to end the music!
@JennyB – YES. Please make them stop. I don’t want to listen to Taylor Swift or whatever starlet of the moment wants to make the next Christmas Classic her own. VOMIT.
You know what else I hate? My favorite shows being pre-empted in favor of lame holiday inspired specials and what not.
Is it over yet?
I have never had fruitcake, real or nasty-fakey kind. My grandmother makes homemade fudge instead. Mmmmm.
I voted for overrated Christmas movies, most of which I have not seen because I am not sappy enough to like them, and that makes me a terrible cold-hearted person, apparently. I don’t mind Christmas episodes of TV shows much, though. Some of my favorites are classics (The West Wing‘s episodes, especially “In Excelsis Deo,” which still makes me cry like a baby, and the Yes Minister–Yes, Prime Minister bridging episode “Party Games,” which has little to do with Christmas besides serving as an excuse to get Hacker drunk but which is HILARIOUS).
I also voted for explaining my religious beliefs to people. GAHHHH. I am an atheist in a non-practicing Catholic family. We still do the Christmas thing because we all have time off and bonus money so we can do things together. That can’t happen at another time of the year, so stop telling me to do it at another time of the year.
And Festivus? I hate Seinfeld. Shut up, Seinfeld.
“FUCK you, Santa!” “Ohhhhhh!”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwTRgDx7xJw
Ugh, fruitcake. I have eaten exactly one fruitcake that I thought was decent – my mom did a chocolate one with chocolate chips, pecans, walnuts, dried cranberries, and brandy-soaked tart cherries she got from her homemade cherry bounce. Shame that the following year she was back to the more common, utterly vile version that uses that abomination against nature, the candied neon-green cherry.
Sign me up for the “It’s a Wonderful Life” hate. The only time I got a smile on my face regarding that movie was with the “killing spree ending” joke on “The Simpsons”.
Cora: Is your dad single? I will totally marry him!
@Holly, I also dropped my favorite radio station because they switched to all Christmas music on November 1st two years ago. It made me especially mad because there was already another station that changed their format to all Christmas every year–we certainly didn’t need two of them.
The D.J.s at my new favorite station adamantly refused to play any Christmas music until after Thanksgiving (and bitched about everyone else who played it too early). So far the only song I’ve heard is John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas’ and that was on the anniversary of his death, so it almost doesn’t count.
@Anlyn, I can’t remember the last time I heard Bing’s ‘White Christmas’ or ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’, or any of those old songs. That sort of music never gets airplay here. It seems like everywhere I go it’s “contemporary†Christmas music playing. I would kill to hear some Bing, or Nat King Cole, or Sinatra…but Alicia Keys singing ‘Little Drummer Girl’? Erg.
Am I the only one that pictured Jim Morrison trying to hand that ornament while on a girl’s bike?
Just me, then? Fair enough.
Now where’s the brain bleach?
I like Christmas carols, but I LOATHE Christmas songs. If I never hear Rudolph, Frosty, Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland, or (especially) Jingle Bell Rock ever again, I won’t miss them at all.
On the other hand, it isn’t Christmas without the family breaking out the Messiah CDs and singing the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of our lungs.
Can we also add cinnamon-scented pine cones to the list? When I start gagging in the grocery store/craft store/fabric store upon entry, I know Christmas is around the corner.
I put in another vote on Hanukkah. It’s has such nice rhythm when one is spelling it out for the goyim. They get all confused by the CH being a gutteral sound. Though my husband’s family has embraced this and they all call the holiday “Chunky”. Which pretty much solves the whole dilemma about spelling. When you have a holiday named after a peanut-butter texture, why bother arguing over spelling?
I know I am probably in the minority here, but I positively HATE the Nutcracker. Ballet bores me to tears, but I can actually sit thru a performance if the story and music is interesting enough. But I just don’t get all the hype surrounding this particular annual performance.
@Meg – I saw Lindt Advent calendars at my local Fancy Deli just the other day. Granted Lindt isn’t best of the best, but it’s bound to be better than the generic plastic chocolate version. (They were 11.99CAD, though.)
There are Christmas songs I love, but like all Christmas things it has to wait until after Thanksgiving. A month of Christmas is plenty.
What stunned me this year during my shopping forays is that apparently a good dozen or so newer pop groups have covered Last Christmas. Now, I actually take huge guilty pleasure in the original camptastic Wham version, but who thought we needed 8 new slow, ‘moving’ renditions of a song… about a dude stalking his one-night-stand from a year ago?
I don’t mind the ‘winter’ pageants. Public schools really shouldn’t be doing manger scenes – that’s what churches are for.
@Katharine- I used it all. Sorry ’bout that.
@Mrs. Apron
THOSE PINE CONES. I used to work for a giant craft store, and let me tell you, those get shipped to the store, along with a lot of other “seasonal” “merchandise” in mid June, and a lot of it is on the sales floor by mid July. But the pine cones are the worst of any of them, because whatever truck they arrive on makes everything reek of that God-awful, overpowering faux-cinnamon. I am convinced that whatever chemical compound they use would be a perfectly adequate substitute for pepper spray; handling box after box and bag after back would often leave me with red little rashes on my hands and arms.
Not to mention the fact that Christmas is the sparkliest holiday of them all, so I would (literally, and in no way figuratively) sneeze glitter for 4 months of the year.
I still like Christmas. I like Christmas music, including a few of the ridiculous, over played carols. (Except Little Drummer Boy. I hate that song. A lot.) I like pretty lights, and I’m smart enough to stay out of stores and just shop online once the madness hits. I refuse to leave my house except for medical emergencies on Black Friday and the rest of that weekend.
I just really wish that Christmas was a DECEMBER holiday. That’s all. I could take 3 weeks. I really could.
@coffeeweasel and others: you make a good point. Part of my Giant Objection to the Public Heavy Rotation of Christmas Music is that so much of it is dominated by pop songs. And my problem isn’t even that I necessarily hate all of them… it’s just that, I hear them once per year, and I’m good. In fact, I could go multiple years without hearing some of them, and then when I would hear them, I might even welcome them in a nostalgic way.
But there are only so many of them. You can’t go to an all-Christmas format pretty much EVER without repeating the hell out of a fairly small stable of songs, and that’s what makes me stabby. Repetition of stuff I like is obviously fine. Repetition of stuff that I merely tolerate fuels loathing.
I actually have a really large collection of Christmas music on my computer. It’s really, really heavy on old carols and instrumentals. That stuff, I can listen to multiple times in a season without coming to hate it… but then I also put it away for the next 11 months. (Speaking of which, I’m really partial to The Christmas Revels’ collections; I think they’re on iTunes now. But I also get to see the show every year, so…)
As for “why not the Nutcracker?” and the holiday movies and such — because I can more easily avoid them.
Howwww can I pick only three, Sars? My hate is spilling over like a dark cornucopia of rage!
Glad to see so many joined in on my previous rant about Christmas music and the unholy abomination it has become. I think the nadir for me was Stevie Nicks singing Silent Night. I have nothing in particular against Nicks but her nasal-y twang is INCORRECT for that song–so much so that I start weeping and plucking the hairs from my temples when I hear it.
Also, Taylor Swift, Christina Aguliera, Cher, whoever–if you insist on performing O Holy Night or It Came Upon The Midnight Clear or some other carol I really, truly love, with your wails and screeches and vocal gymnastics, could you at least refrain from d wearing the candycane stockings/frilly corset/Santa hat stripper outfit while doing so? You are singing about the the birth of Christ, put on a dress! I don’t care what your “image” is, young lady, you are not going out like that!
I like the Nutcracker music, but I’ve never seen the ballet. (The only ballet I’ve ever seen was The Rite of Spring, which, er, yeah.) My two favorite versions aren’t traditional, though: there’s a “commercial” Nickelodeon used to run (still runs?) around this time every year with Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants “selling” an album of his own Christmas music and his version of the overture is so random in the context of the commercial that it makes me laugh every time. Here ya go. And the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s song “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” is amazing.
I’ll go for anything atraditional. Bill Evans’s version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is great, mostly because it’s just randomly thrown in the middle of Further Conversations With Myself and not on a Christmas album of some kind. Weird Al’s Christmas songs are similarly a joy in their random inclusions on normal albums.
All the comments about Christmas music reminds me of the X-Files episode “The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas,” when Scully tells Mulder that she’d been Christmas shopping, and if she’d heard “The Little Drummer Boy” one more time, she was going to start taking hostages. Oh, you and me both, Scully.
I had to vote for ol’ Garrison, because he either needs to get his ass on-key or stop it.
@Tori: at my house, we scream at the jewelry commercials: “It’s just carbon! And it’s not that rare! Stop spending all that money on it!”
I love Christmas, but I hate almost all of these things. Vehemently. Somehow, I’m even annoyed by both sides of the inedible silver ball issue.
I have to disagree about midnight mass because it’s awesome at my church. There’s a full choir, lots of candles, no Nativity pageant to sit through, everyone’s in good spirits (in more ways than one), and you’re still out of there in about a half hour.