This may end up being a series, I’m not sure.
There are plenty of things to love about Christmas. Presents, spending time with friends and family members you love. Good food. The beginning of the redemption story if you’re a Christian. But let’s be honest, as with anything, there are down sides.
One of the worst things about the Christmas season, in my opinion, is hearing “Christmas Shoes” over and over on the radio. You know, the song. It’s the one about a little boy emptying his piggy bank at a store to buy a Christmas present for his dying mother. SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t have enough money and the song narrator pays for them for him.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what people enjoy about a song with a gut-wrenching narrative aimed at making people cry.
If you haven’t heard it (lucky you), here are the lines that usually get me: “Could you hurry Sir? Daddy says there’s not much time. She’s been sick for quite a while and I know these shoes will make her smile and I want her to look beautiful if mama meets Jesus tonight.”
(No joke, I just typed that from memory).
That was usually the line where I would turn the radio off so I wouldn’t ruin my mascara. Now I turn it off because I’m bored with it. And I don’t understand why people like it.
Isn’t Christmas a happy holiday about the beginning of redemption for mankind? At the very least it’s about giving and celebrating love. How this song with its dying mom/ poor son, tear-jerking narrative became a December staple, I’ll never know.
Newsong released the song in 2000 and it became a mainstream hit for the Christian vocal band. It also inspired a best-selling book, a made-for-TV movie and countless church Christmas plays. Evidently someone out there likes the song. If you do and could fill me in on why, that would be great.
I just don’t get it.
What are you dreading about the holiday season?
Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime.” Every time I hear it I question whether I should like the Beatles or not.
That’s another one that radio stations play way too much.
Well, it’s not actually a simple, happy story. It’s a story fraught with complexity. The commercial Christmas is simple, the original story is anything but.
Good point.
(For the record, I don’t know this song.)
If they can make you cry, they can make you buy. Simple.
For me Christmas is a non-event.
True Albert. Also I’m getting you a Christmas present so it won’t be a non-event.
That song is the absolute worst. Also terrible: that one that’s about the two married people who meet up in a grocery store or something and talk about how they had an affair or how they wish they did or are miserable or something? How is that an appropriate song for the Christmas season? And why is it that I can’t turn it off when it comes on the radio, because I now believe that suffering through it is a viable tradition?! *sigh*
I think I know which one you’re talking about. Terrible. Also, the one that goes “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart but the very next day, you gave it away. This year to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special.” Ok, you obviously thought that person from last year was special too… Haha. I could go on. Turns out there are a lot of bad Christmas songs.
Yes– that one is way bad as well, plus T. Swift covered it, which does NOT help.
The Christmas Shoes is not only the worst Christmas song ever, it is the worst song ever. It is also one of the worst things ever. A growing army of bloggers is rising up to denounce it. We are legion.
For example… http://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/the-worst-day-of-christmas/