Not to be a downer, but I personally don't celebrate Xmas or any of the religious holidays. I was raised Christian -- Catholic, in fact -- but now consider myself an atheist. So for me, all the hubbub about holidays/holy days in general seems strange and peculiar.
That said, I actually walked out -- at all of about 11 years old -- of a mass where the priest was expressing outrage over the phrase "don we now our gay apparel" in "Deck the Halls" as being part of some sort of subversive, hedonistic brainwashing tactics by the "liberal gay agenda" from France and the United Kingdom. (This was during the post-9/11 hyper-nationalistic "Freedom Fries" hysteria, btw.)

An "agenda-bender," if you will. He claimed it was a mockery of God and his teachings because it was a double-entendre; the word
Don derived from the Latin for
king. As though the "emperor" was wearing women's clothes and was a "cross" dresser.

"Don" obviously means in this case "to put on; to wear," not Don Corleone dressing up like Maria Callas, and the song itself is from an era when gay didn't mean homosexual but meant, well, merry. Like Merry Old England or... Gay Paree.

No way anyone's going to wish anyone a Gay Christmas nowadays... although I might, just to see how the right-wingers in my neighborhood (which is basically everyone) would react. I pretended I was going to the bathroom but never went back, not that day and never since.
I get a kick out of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song," but only the first one; the second and third just aren't as funny for some reason. Didn't see
Eight Crazy Nights, and I find the Neil Diamond cover version stupid for the "don't smoke marijuana-kah" part.

(Usually I like Neil Diamond's songs, even "You Make it Feel Like Christmas," but he just comes across here as some old guy forever in blue jeans telling the young whipper-snappers to avoid reefer madness and not blaze up the holly and the ivy. Yeah, way to connect with anyone who isn't collecting Social Security, Neil. Even for a dude from the '60s you seem pretty square.)
My favorite has to be the Kinks' cynical "Father Christmas." It really reminds me of why I gave up on all that stuff as being, well, stranger than fiction. (I'm sure an encounter with Lola under the mistletoe was for the lead singer too.)

But I get a bittersweet twinge whenever Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" would come on ("It's all cold down on the beach... wind whippin' down the Boardwalk...") only because Clarence ("you been rehearsin' real hard, so Santa'll bring you a new saxophone?") is somewhere playing his sax alongside George Bailey's pal of same name.
But oh, the shoes song, and that "god-awful" Hallmark TV movie with Rob Lowe? I can't stand the stupid shoes song anyway, and I'm just not a fan of Rob Lowe. I was
REALLY annoyed, though, when my local radio station played it over and over again during the Iraq war to "p--- off those sandbox commies by throwing the shoes of Christ at their stupid Allah."

Really loving thy neighbor, aren't we?

The idiots at that station
knew that shoes being hurled at someone is obviously an expression of anger, but especially disrespectful in Islamic culture, which is why it was a
symbolic gesture (rather than merely a threat of violence) when the Iraqi activist threw them at Dubya Bush (which had just happened, this being why he kept playing it). This is what annoys me about how people interpret Christianity, or whatever religion, as being "superior" for whatever reason. Because people are the way they are I can't separate the belief from the believers. Not to mention the oft-repeated fear of shopping mall Santas surreptitiously passing background checks even though they're more like Sandusky Claus. This actually happened near to where I live, so I tend to have a different perspective on "he knows when you are sleeping."

That pervert ever peeks in my frosted windowpanes I'll shoot his eye out.
All that aside, though... you've gotta love this: During Whitney Houston's "Do You Hear What I Hear," the part that goes "a song, a song, high above the trees," it sounds like she's singing "a thong, a thong, high up in the trees."
I know, they're briefs, but still: Do you see what I see?
