My Christmas playlist
Saturday, December 24, 2005 at 11:44 AM • Holidays

As a genre, Christmas music is repetitive and nauseating. Even though we’re treated to it nonstop for nearly two months, its repertoire is surprisingly limited: we get endlessly insipid variations on very few songs — eighty bazillion versions of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “O Holy Night,” as Jennifer has discovered. I can’t recall a single original song in the past few decades that has entered the canon; most of the “popular” songs (read: snow and Santa rather than religious) are at least decades old.

Fortunately, the Christmas novelty songs provide some relief. Some of them are silly, some of them are filthy, and some are just as derivative as the latest forgettable pop star’s forgettable rendition of an old war-horse carol. But they’re the only things that keep me sane. And I’ve finally collected enough of them that I can offer you a playlist of them to keep you sane.

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