Tuning out: Comedian Tara Flynn takes issue with popular Christmas songs

Fed up with the forced gaiety, comedian Tara Flynn gives our traditional Christmas songs a thoroughly modern roasting.

‘It’s the most judgemental time of the year.’

MAYBE those aren’t the real words to that song, but that’s how I hear them, whenever I let my Christmas playlist spin around on shuffle, as I muffle through the park with my dog.

Christmas songs are, to put it mildly, worrying. They’re a hotbed of judgement. I tell myself I listen to them to “get myself in the mood”, but I have to admit that mostly, the mood ends up being ‘grumpy’— and I’m not even doing panto.

Crystal-voiced angel choirs sing about the holiday season like it’s easy, like it just happens: bells to be heard, candy canes to be draped on freshly cut trees, and stockings to be knit from scratch, to be hung with care from seemingly permanently blazing fireplaces. No pressure.

What if you don’t have a fireplace? What if edible chestnuts are only available in one of those gourmet stores that require a second mortgage to even buy a banana? Chestnuts, it seems, are the Christmas avocado.

Then we have to reckon with the fact that many of our favourite traditional tunes were written in (‘coughs’) another time. Should Jack Frost really be ‘nipping at your nose’ in the MeToo era? How well do we know Jack? And did we consent to this ‘nipping’? Jack sounds like that guy at the office party who shrugs off the invasion of your personal space by saying, ‘Sher, it’s all a bit of craic’. But we sing about him as a loveable, cheeky chappie. ‘Ah, that’s just Jack! Jack does that kind of thing! You know, a messer!’

Meanwhile, you’re the one with the nipped nose when no one has ever satisfactorily explained what ‘nipping’ actually entails. We didn’t even need to wait for faux outrage about Baby It’s Cold Outside not being banned, just not played in some quarters — Jack was there long before.

Then there’s the casual drug use in almost all those innocent songs. Angels we Have Heard on high, for example. ‘High’ is right. You hear about this kind of thing. A friend of mine once drank some mushroom tea and headed off down Patrick St thinking he was Prince. He was shocked that people weren’t more surprised to see him. Maybe because he wasn’t wearing purple.

Don’t blame me, I’m only saying what’s right there in the songs. Let’s not even start on how full of ‘snow’ the tunes are, even though climate change means we only get a week of it every three years. I have no proof that ‘snow’ is being used as a euphemism here, but I hear it was very big in the ’80s, when greed was good and ‘snow’ was in all the books about Wall Street.

Which brings us to a troubling question: how exactly do you think Rudolph got his red nose? Is Santa secretly doping his deer? After all, a 24-hour flight is a lot to ask of a usually earth-bound mammal. And don’t try to tell me the reason for their flight is ‘magic’ or ‘Christmas cheer’ because we all know what that means: it means Uncle Pat is about to dig an ancient bottle of poitín out of the hot press and insist that everyone partakes. It’s absolutely terrifying.

Santa loves his reindeer, we know this. But even the kindest people slip up when they’re under pressure. To be honest, it’s surprising that — after all this time and the near-universal acknowledgement of the stress of present-giving — there are still no songs about Santa’s therapist.

All those lists he needs to check twice? Kris can’t expect Mrs Claus to do all that emotional labour, she’s just one woman. How many cookies is she expected to produce while being the only one who knows where Santa’s boots are, helping him check lists containing billions of names twice, and coaching him through his crippling self-doubt — ‘What if this is the year I don’t make all the houses?’

You’re not about to tell me there isn’t a therapy elf, because it’s just not plausible. We can all use some elf help — that the Claus’ marriage has survived so many Christmas Eves makes it clear they’re working on it. Though I’d hope ‘you’d better not cry’ isn’t a maxim Santa himself lives by. Everyone needs that release sometimes.

Perhaps the most unrealistic thing about those songs, though, is the harmony. Not the musical aspect— that’s lush. Have you listened to the Carpenters’ seasonal albums? Do. Though you might have to brush your teeth afterwards.

I’m talking about the way everyone is driving home singing, “I can’t wait to see their faces”.

Instead of actually being grateful for tailbacks and the couple of hours’ grace from being top-to-toe in relatives and the inevitable tension. Bad things happen when there are too many of you in the house, even before Pat’s poitín enters the mix. Then there’s the rampant, gleeful consumerism. It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas is basically a list of stuff in shops, like a cunning advance pitch to be the music for the big retail ads of the future. Clothes, gold, toys — they’re all there, and the blasted candy canes make yet another appearance.

I’m aware that the end of each verse is about how Christmas is really in “your own front door” or your “heart”. But it’s too late. My inadequacy and I are already en route to the shopping centre, driven by guilt that it started ‘looking a lot like Christmas’ weeks ago and I haven’t even a bauble up.

I’m no Scrooge, I love Christmas. But the forced twinkliness in those songs is a little overwhelming. Of course, we need light, the bit of excess, if we’re lucky enough to be able to afford it, to get us through the winter; that’s why pagans invented solstice celebrations. But I’d imagine pagan songs were less along the line of ‘Oh, you didn’t make your pudding yourself? Loser!’ and more ‘We survived, there’s hope, let’s drink some mead.’ Not a murmur about spending or being the sparkliest, just ‘Hurrah, we weren’t eaten by a wolf!’

It seems like once those pushy carol singers arrived in We Wish You a Merry Christmas, all bets were off. The neck of them. ‘Bring us some figgy pudding’ — ever heard of ‘please’? Or, ‘We won’t go until we’ve got some’. Wow, carollers, just wow. At least chuggers have the grace to be collecting for charity, not brimming with cake demands.

This festive season — because we’re not all Christmas people — let’s give each other a break. We don’t have to have the biggest turkey or shiniest shoes, or look like Gigi Hadid going up to midnight Mass. We just have to be decent. If we can. Grateful. If we can.

It’s not always easy when life’s been tough and these pressure-filled songs have us at the end of our tether. But we can try. Despite the wishes of glam-rock band Wizzard, it isn’t Christmas every day, and thank Santa for that.