Grabbing your jollies

Believe it or not, the Grinch believes in Christmas music: Here are some essential CDs.

By Mike McGuirk

It's Christmastime. That's Christmas, not Xmas, and if the godless San Franciscans on the Bay Guardian copy desk try taking the Christ out of Christmas in my Christmas article, there's gonna be hell to pay – believe me.

I get a little weird around Christmas. I don't get depressed, really, but I do often buy a Christmas tree in a fit of some unnamable desperation. Last year I bought a tree for the house I lived in and at the last minute decided not to share it with my roommates. Instead I put it up in my room, bought a ton of lights, got fake snow and a plastic snowman, and transformed my room into what I called "Christmas Central."

I think it's a holdover from my childhood, when Christmas represented the most extreme times in our house, from dizzying heights of expectance (my mother would start with the "What do you think you're getting for Christmas?" questions in August. To be fair, she always delivered – my mother would buy us everything and go to ridiculous lengths to surprise and enchant us) to utter yowling chaos. I'll just say I never saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, but I did see her hit Santa Claus in the face with a pot roast a few times. Many of us have had this experience. I don't think I'm any different. But the thing that is different about me is that, as a result, I actually embrace the insanity of Christmastime – I enjoy going to the mall when it's clogged with people the week before Christmas. I am totally into killing a tree and decorating it. More telling, I love Christmas music.

Do you? Are you one of us? If you are, here is a little primer on Christmas music.

Brian Wilson, What I Really Want for Christmas (Arista, 2005). Besides the unsettling title, What I Really Want features probably the biggest Christmas weirdo in the world putting creepy Beach Boys-like vocal harmony chants all over standards and a few originals. There are only two songs from The Beach Boys' Christmas Album (Capitol, 1964), which is worth it alone for the druggy "White Christmas" (the track should be called "China White Christmas"). I don't know if I'd call this essential, but it's Brian Wilson, so there'll be half a million chronic masturbator/record geeks drooling over the arrangements.

Carpenters, Christmas Portrait (A&M, 1984). Like all their stuff, the Carpenters' Christmas music is soft-lit and glinting like, well, a tree, and dead Karen and her brother Richard apply tempos to songs like "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and "Sleigh Ride" that are so slo-mo you can actually feel your respiratory system collapsing. Karen's anally precise diction on each song is another major draw. I could listen to her say the word chestnuts a million zillion times. There is a newer version of this Christmas album that compiles all of the Carpenters' holiday stuff. It's called Christmas Collection and is approximately 72 hours long. It has more nine-minute medleys than 2112.

Phil Spector, A Special Christmas Gift for You (Philles, 1963). OK, this is the single most awesome Christmas album of all time. There is just no touching Darlene Love's "White Christmas" and the painfully wonderful "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Maybe it's overplayed and I am stating the obvious – I don't care. The Crystals' "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is definitive; Phil Spector's totally creepy monologue during "Silent Night" is beyond weird; and basically every single thumping drum sound on the record, the clanging bells, and the shimmering quality of the recording, not to mention the stable of incredible talent the dude amassed, just don't exist anywhere else. And you can only listen to it for two weeks a year. That makes it special.

Frank Sinatra, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"/"I'll Be Home for Christmas." This guy I work with brought to my attention the fact that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were both released at the height of World War II (1942 and '43 respectively), so lyrics like "Through the years we all will be together / If the fates allow" and "Next year all our troubles will be far away" took on a slightly heavier meaning when people were dying every two seconds in Europe and the South Pacific. And the idea of soldiers hearing "I'll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams" transcends the writers' obvious attempts at grabbing heartstrings ("I'll Be Home" stayed on the charts for seven weeks in 1942). Bing Crosby sang the hit version of "I'll Be Home," but what you want are Sinatra's versions of that song and of "Have Yourself" from around 1957. They don't have the historical significance, but the arrangements are slow and dark. "Have Yourself," in particular, is tinged with more bitterness than melancholy. It ends up as the kind of song you want playing as you toss flaming bricks through your ex's window on Christmas Eve. The songs are available on A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra (Capitol, 1957), an album that, on the whole, is not all that jolly.

Alvin and the Chipmunks, Christmas with Alvin and the Chipmunks (Liberty, 1962). In our house, right after Thanksgiving, the Christmas records would come out of the closet, and my mother would start playing Christmas music round the clock. The albums all had shiny red covers, or cartoons on them, or pictures of each star appearing on the record like a movie cast. I loved the look of Christmas records, and the Chipmunks' Christmas record was most amazing. "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)," may sound cloying after hearing it in your sleep, as an adult, for two months, but that's why God invented whippets.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Christmas Time Again (CMC International, 2000). This album sucks through and through. A song called "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'," about Santa Claus nailing Mrs. Claus in the kitchen, would embarrass R. Kelly. But if you're having more Jack Daniels than egg nog this year, you might want to check it out.

To purchase the music featured in this article, visit iTunes:

Brian Wilson, What I Really Want for Christmas (Arista, 2005)

Carpenters, Christmas Portrait (A&M, 1984)

Phil Spector, A Special Christmas Gift for You (Philles, 1963)

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Christmas Time Again (CMC International, 2000)