Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Love:
No Place Like Home for the Holidays Out of the classic songs that get played over a store radio this time of year, this is the one that I whistle to myself when I'm cutting down the Christmas tree. My mother loves Christmas, which is the only thing I really like about Christmas, so that's what makes me happy to think about.
What are you Doing New Year's Eve Obviously a holiday season song rather than Christmas, but New Year's Eve is my favorite romantic holiday. Valentine's day is commercialized garbage, anniversaries are mostly kinda dumb in practice; but kissing at midnight to ring in the New Year is a particular moment that can only happen with one person every year, and having someone to kiss is a critical status symbol in high school/college, and being together is part of being a couple. The O'Jays do a really perfect, slinky arrangement. It carries both the longing and pleading, and a certain sly naughty offer to it. The speaker is humbling himself before the object of his longing ("Oh-oh, just in case, I stand one little chance, Here comes the jackpot question in advance..." "out of the thousands of invitations you receive") but the performance and arrangement reflects a confident offer of pleasure.
Hate:
Wonderful Christmastime I hate the Beatles, which makes this pretty straightforward. Saccharine and awful.
Happy Holidays My most boomer take, I hate the phrase Happy Holidays. Growing up I was a good little liberal, inculcated with the idea that the "War on Christmas" was Fox News bullshit and that inclusiveness meant wishing everyone Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, so that you wouldn't make people feel bad if they didn't do Christmas. This was based on growing up in a culture in which the religious majority-minority dynamic was built around Christians and Jews, and Jews historically took the view that celebrating Christmas was a threat to their religion, and equally they have no interest in me celebrating their holidays. I wanted to be tolerant, so I went along with it. Then as I grew up I got to know more Hindus and Muslims, and they love Christmas, and they would love for me to stop by on their holidays. I realized that nobody means Happy Holidays, it's just a corporate generic gesture, not the way one means "Merry Christmas." I don't feel good when someone wishes me Merry Christmas, and I'm not offended or left out when someone wishes me Eid Mubarak or have a good Diwali or whatever. We should all just wish each other to have a happy [holiday one actually celebrates] and we all understand that if we aren't celebrating, they're just hoping we have a good day that day.
Happy Holidays by Andy Williams was on repeat on an album playing in the nurse's station the night my second son was about to be born. I heard it many, many times as I sat there in an office chair in the wee hours off the hallway of my wife's hospital bed and waited while she experienced labor. I think I had never heard it until 2010. Which is odd. Special place in my heart anyway and I love it. Same with all the Home Alone featured Christmas songs, as well as Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas where I remember that scene in The Victors.
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You've linked Andy Williams' Happy Holidays/The Holiday Season medley, which is the perfect subversion of the original and the general "happy holidays" sentiment: its chorus is Happy Holidays, but 90% of the lyrics are about Christmas and no other holidays are mentioned at all.
Which is in my opinion the best way to respond to the Happy Holidays term: I mean Merry Christmas, you mean Merry Christmas, we all know that Christmas is the only holiday that really registers on anyone's radar. Happy Holidays means Merry Christmas, it is an entirely Christmas-owned term. If the Jews want us to get Hanukkah in there, they better get started on doing some outreach and getting people on board, because right now my second favorite December holiday is Diwali. It's got nothing to do with Christmas, but the snacks are great and the celebrants are generous with them.
I find it obnoxious to listen to in line at the Home Depot. That's really all I'm saying about. I'm not doing literary analysis.
At scouts as a kid, the Dreidl was crackerjack, so there's been some effort. And in middle school chorus, the token chanukah songs were normally pretty good. So it's not impossible.
Yeah I vaguely recall someone coming to our schools a couple times, maybe making some latkes, and learning some songs. Systematize that, bring a basket of challah and some chocolate coins for the dreidel gambling game every year, and it'd be a fantastic initial impression.
But I think it would drop off pretty heavily in adulthood, because while I remember Diwali celebrations in the office quite fondly, I don't remember any Hanukkah equivalent, and I know I have Jewish coworkers. Which speaks to your initial point: Judaism doesn't seem to have much interest in us getting involved in their holidays. So thus I claim the "holidays" for Christmas and Christmas alone, as Diwali lands much earlier, the Asian New Year is later, I have never seen anyone genuinely celebrate Kwanzaa, and New Year's is basically a Christmas extension.
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pedant alarm Strictly speaking this is a McCartney solo single. Obviously I agree with you, I despised this song for years before learning it was written by a man widely considered to be one of the best songwriters of the twentieth century. What the fuck kind of off-day was he having?
As part of my ongoing war against the intrusion of American culture into Ireland, I recently learned to my dismay that children in primary schools are now being instructed to say "happy holidays" rather than "happy Christmas". In Dublin, the river Liffey runs through the city, with the southside stereotypically considered more posh and affluent than the comparatively impoverished northside, and whenever I venture into the southside I discover that it's been so infected by secular woke nonsense that they literally aren't celebrating any religious holiday anymore. Seriously: the Christmas lights (for everyone knows that's what they are) fall under the banner of "Winter in Dublin".
Winter in Dublin. What the fuck. Every time I see that stupid sign I want to tear it down. I'm sure if I asked whatever idiotic gang of apparatchiks responsible for the decision why they went for "Winter in Dublin" rather than "Christmas in Dublin", they would be completely unable to articulate why, just listing off a string of incomprehensible woke word salad about "inclusive" and "modern Ireland". It's got me thinking about the concept of asymmetric multiculturalism: Christians in Christian countries aren't supposed to ostentatiously celebrate their faiths, but Muslims in Christian countries can do so to their hearts' content. No Muslim in Ireland is going to be saying "happy holidays" to any of his co-religionists when Ramadan next rolls around. But to my relief, I noticed that one set of Christmas lights on the northside wishes everyone a happy Christmas, not a happy (ugh) "winter in Dublin". Working-class Dubs evidently have no time for woke nonsense of this description.
(In Dublin City Council's defense, there's also this sign reading "Nollaig Shona Duit" on the southside's Grafton St, one of Dublin's main shopping streets. "Nollaig Shona Duit" is Irish for "happy Christmas to you". The message is crystal clear: you can celebrate your faith, as long as you do so in a language no Muslim is likely to understand.)
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