If I Was In Charge Of Christmas
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
If you remember last week I was discussing Christmas carols. The trouble with most of them is the ancient songwriters ran out of things to say and started adding a few verses. Of course they did: carol writers are paid by the word. It doesn’t matter what the words says as long as he or she can crank out enough of them to make a few bucks.
A classic example is We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The 4th verse is a little weird but we never hear it because it is a bit risqué:
Please bring us some figgy pudding
Please bring us some figgy pudding
Please bring us some figgy pudding
Please bring it right here.
It wasn’t ‘figgy’ in the original version, but the pope at the time cleaned it up for the little carolers.
A better example is ‘Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly’. In three verses there are 12 Fa’s and, get this — 96 la’s. At a buck a word, the lyricist made a hundred and eight bucks and you won’t find a fa or a la in the dictionary.
Auld Lang Syne has been sung on New Year’s Eve for God knows how long. We all know it — but do we really? We all know the first verse and the refrain. But no one knows the rest of it. Well I’m sure the Scottish folks do, but I mean normal people.
And here’s a hand, my trustie friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
And we’ll tak’ a right guid willie-waught
For auld lang syne.
Now I have no problem shaking a Scotsman’s hand if a Campbell or a Macdonald spits on it and says, “Poot ‘er there, Jamie But I’ll noo be shaking his willie-waught. Well, there’s no telling where it’s been is there?”
They are a strange bunch of people, the Scots. Their songs don’t make any sense at all. ’A wee dock and doris, just a wee dock that’s all. If you can say it’s a braw brick moonlick nick’ — what in hell does that mean? And who is this Doris and what is she doing shaking someone’s willie waught on a moonlick nicht? Especially if it’s 20 below, she could end up with a frozen willie waught in her hand.
But, Christmas is not a time for dirty stories. It’s a time for Peace on Earth, and goodwill towards men – you’ll notice the Bible doesn’t mention goodwill towards women. That’s because men wrote it. Women don’t have time for goodwill anyway. They’re too busy shopping, wrapping and keeping the kids quiet while her old man lies on the couch watching a football game.
Christmas is that joyous time of year when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour by eating, drinking and spending money like the City of Orillia did on the MURF centre. We finally got the sucker built and now the city is in hock until the next millennium. I can hardly wait for the bills start coming in for the new waterfront.
We finally wake up sometime in late January carrying an extra 20 pounds of lard with a major alcohol problem and up to our ever-expanding bums in credit card bills and finance charges.
While we are at it, which bozo decided to celebrate Christmas in December? It sure wasn’t a Canadian, it’s too hard on us.
Why can’t the flippin’ Australians stand outside in two-feet of snow trying to put up a string of tacky icicle lights? Why does it have to be us? Let Crocodile Dundee wander around a Christmas tree lot with a 90-mile an hour blizzard howling around his scruffy buns — not me.
Just once I’d like to celebrate Christmas in the summertime, maybe sit in Gerry Sharpe`s back yard with a couple of coolers singing, Christmas carols with chestnuts roasting on his barbecue.
Have you ever eaten chestnuts? I tried one once from a street vendor in Toronto — tasted awful. You know where he got them, off his neighbour’s lawn. He has a chestnut tree. He also has a dog and he’s too lazy or too stupid to stoop and scoop.
‘Yuletide carols being sung by a choir in short shorts and halter tops’
That’s my idea of a Merry Christmas, not freezing to death in the teeth of an Alberta Clipper! Christmas should be on the 25th of July not December. Christmas in the summertime would be a lot better for everyone, especially the Salvation Army. Summer is the best time for collecting money; everyone knows that. Stand a Sally Ann lady in front of the liquor store in a bonnet and a string bikini; she’ll make a fortune.
I know there’s nothing that makes me appreciate the divine works of a benevolent creator like a pretty girl in a string bikini.
