Don't Play That Song!

by Eric

According to a recent survey the most annoying Christmas song in America is Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You. I'm not sure I've heard the song, but if I did I would probably be annoyed. It's not that I find Christmas music irritating in itself. What annoys me is its ubiquity.

Beginning some time around Thanksgiving, no one can escape being aurally drenched in Christmas spirit no matter where they go or what they do. Television and radio are as full of musical cheer as overstuffed stockings. The radio station I listen to in the car adopts an all Christmas playlist. Last week the supermarket played tunes about Santa and sleigh rides instead of the usual sixties hits. (Man, I never imagined I'd ever be old enough to actually enjoy store muzak. Bummer.)

Mind you, Christmas music is fine in moderation, at the right time, under the right circumstances. When I lived in Brooklyn WPIX Channel 11 broadcast a burning Yule log accompanied by Christmas music for several hours Christmas Eve. You can find that Yule log and imitators all over YouTube. The crackling fire on my computer monitor produces as much warmth as my black and white television set did. Quite pleasant, actually.

My first, and all time favorite, holiday song is, of course, The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) released in the fall of 1958. Alvin wanted a hula hoop, the big fad at the time. I already had a hula hoop and could use it without risking throwing my back out, which shows how long ago that was.

The second best Christmas song, I am sure you'll agree, is the Three Stooge's version of I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas with its brilliant witty word play. Would you say it is more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward?

Granted I may be prejudiced by having encountered those songs at a young age. Maybe youthful exposure also explains why I hate, hate, hate Little Drummer Boy. Talk about tedious and repetitive. "Pa rum pum pum pum"? Honestly? And someone says rock 'n' roll lyrics are ridiculous. Anyway -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- Oh no! -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- Now I have it in my head! -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- (Oh, the sacrifices one makes to write newsletter essays....)

Probably for the same reasons I'm not fond of the pop choral versions of carols because my parents owned too many Ray Coniff records. Later I preferred the more modern approach exemplified by Phil Spector's famous Christmas album, although it's hard to listen to it today without thinking about Spector's subsequent history. The same is true of John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) one of my favorites but with sad associations.

It's become increasingly common for modern artists to supplement the traditional Christmas songs with new compositions. (Also the case with mystery books!) Only a few will enter the canon to be played year after year as Lennon's has, something I wouldn't have imagined when it first came out. At Christmas there's always talk about peace and goodwill but it is all rather abstract, part of the holiday spirit. To actually call for peace, right now, in the world we live in, is seen by too many as some sort of political statement.

My favorite Christmas collection, which has become a tradition for me since it was released in 1979, is Light of the Stable by Emmylou Harris, traditional carols with some modern songs mixed in. Alas, it does include Little Drummer Boy but since it's Emmylou Harris I suppose that will have to be forgiven. Pa rum pum pum pum. Pa rum pum pum pum.

Or maybe not!

Listen to Light of the Stable

A Manor-House View

by Mary

The coke-bottle windows of Maywrite Towers currently disclose a view of frozen snow and bare branches lying under that unnatural hush a blanket of snow brings, and with overnight temperatures forecast to fall into the teens the buggy will not be off to town for a few days. Another storm arriving in the near future is expected to leave several more inches of snow, but early forecasts have not addressed whether or not a white Christmas may be expected.

When we think of Christmas, apart from snow, what springs to mind? Carols, crackers of the pull-and-bang persuasion, and cards -- and in the British tradition the telling of ghost stories on Christmas night. As I have observed elsewhere, whatever the weather without, by authorial design there is something unsettling about blinding flashes of lightning revealing changes in the positions of the figures in ancestral portraits or the appearance of oddly mottled and claw-like hands scratching at diamond-paned casements in the aptly named dead of night. And while crashing rolls of thunder may drown out the screams of the doomed innocent in the locked attic, it never seems to mask the grim sound of the approaching coach and four driven by the dissolute and long deceased fourth earl, inevitably arriving at the front door on the stroke of midnight though not with the intention of delivering pizza.

As to ghost stories, let me suggest -- no, I insist -- a wonderful yarn just right for keeping up the afore-mentioned tradition: The Mezzotint by M. R. James , long my favourite of this type of fiction. For those who've not read it, it begins, as with a number of his works, in an ordinary not to say routine way. Who could have guessed requesting a catalogue of topographical pictures would launch a mystery, investigation of which ends in such a chilling fashion?

As the story opens Mr Williams, who presides over a university art museum, is considering the purchase of the titular mezzotint, described by the dealer thus: "978.—Unknown. Interesting mezzotint: View of a manor-house, early part of the century. 15 by 10 inches; black frame. £2 2s."

On its arrival at Mr Williams' college rooms for examination, unlike the more traditional and indeed oft times expected setting for this type of fiction, the manor-house concerned is not depicted as an overgrown ruin with ivy shrouding the few remnants of its walls, broken statues reclining in knee-high grass, the family vault within sight of the back door, and a lake half choked with sickly vegetation. Instead the building is almost boring in its details, the mezzotint depicting "a full-face view of a not very large manor-house of the last century, with three rows of plain sashed windows with rusticated masonry about them, a parapet with balls or vases at the angles, and a small portico in the centre. On either side were trees, and in front a considerable expanse of lawn."

Mr Williams doesn't think much of the mezzotint or the price asked for it and intends to send it back to the dealer. However, he first decides to attempt to identify the manor-house. Aided by a couple of words on the remains of a label on the back of the mezzotint, —ngley Hall and —ssex, he and two friends consult gazetteers and guide-books and it is Mr Williams who traces the mysterious house.

Unfortunately, after a series of events involving the mezzotint the solving of the mystery of its location leads to a chilling conclusion, all the more awful because a possible solution to these occurrences suggested in the narration has to be correct.

It is the understated nature of the horror in James' ghost story that I really admire. But occasionally a reader's goosebumps are created for a more personal reason. I shall not name the short story in question but on reading it I was set back more than somewhat when I came across the name of a close friend on a suicide's tombstone, a vital clue to the explanation of the supernatural event involved.

The Mezzotint appears in James' collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary:

Read the Mezzotint

I intend to reread it for the umpteenth time on Christmas night to keep up the fine old tradition.