"A Christmas Carol"

[gunfan]

AN EVENING (WASTED) WITH TOM LEHRER
3. A Christmas Carol
One very familiar type of song is the Christmas carol, although it is perhaps a bit out of season at this time. However, I am informed by my disk jockey friends, of whom I have none, that in order to get a song popular by Christmas time you have to start plugging it well in advance, so here it goes. It's always seemed to me, after all, that Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in - I refer, of course, to money. And yet, none of the Christmas carols that you hear on the radio, or in the street, even attempts to capture the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it in the United States, that is to say the commercial spirit. So I should like to offer the following Christmas carol for next year as being perhaps a bit more appropriate.

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say when.

Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore.
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense, 'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
("Just the thing I need, how nice!")

It doesn't matter how sincere it is,
Nor how heart felt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy!

So, let the raucous sleighbells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

Actually, I did rather well myself this past Christmas. The nicest present I received was a gift certificate good at any hospital for a lobotomy... rather thoughtful.


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Merry Christmas,

Scott

 

[stevelyn]

Sounds like it'd make a good Bob Rivers Twisted Christmas tune.

 

[Tory]

Tom Lehrer - now THERE's a "blast from the past!"

I always liked "Vatican Rag." Imagine what he could do with that now, with all the pervo-priests exposed.

"The Wild West," about Almagordo, is somewhat dated now, but was hilarious in '67.

 

[rritter]

And just to keep this thread somewhat gun-related, there's "The Hunting Song".

In the lead-in to the song on the "Tom Lehrer Revisted" album, he mentions how every year during hunting season you read about one hunter shooting another, "under the impression that he was a deer in a red hat, perhaps, or maybe a large, flesh-colored squirrel".

"I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow -
two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow!"

"People ask me how I do it,
and I say "There's nothing to it!
You just stand there looking cute --
and when something moves, you shoot!""

"The law was very firm - it
took away my permit,
the worst punishment I ever endured.
It turns out there was a reason,
cows were out of season,
and one of the hunters wasn't insured!"

Tom Lehrer is very much a New England liberal, anti-gun type. He's still one of the funniest song writers ever!