Christmas Music: Don’t Make Us Annoyed

At this time of year I tend to become obnoxious about my musical preferences. Well, okay: more obnoxious. People, as we know, can be divided into exactly two categories: those who divide people into two categories; and those who do not. (Joke! Haha! I still got it!) Or, more to the point, we can divide people into those who like holiday music; and those who do not. I am in the latter category of the latter dichotomy...and, it seems, the former category of the former dichotomy, which is irrelevant, but I felt I needed to bring it to a conclusion since I brought it up.

The point is, I am not, for the most part, a Christmas/Winter Holiday music person. Radio stations and department stores start playing all the usual C/WH songs before Thanksgiving, it seems, and my objection is not that the songs are bad (though some just objectively are bad; case in point: Get a load of this “Yooooo-hoooooo!” in Johnny Mathis’s version of “Sleigh Ride'': BAD!); it’s that even the good ones get way overplayed and the funny ones (e.g., “Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer”; Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song”) lose the funny when you’ve heard them enough times to make your ears want to pull up stakes and run off with a more musically discriminating head.

Hence my C/WH Season Musical Obnoxiousness. And that obnoxiousness takes the form of my loudly proclaiming: “The only C/WH song I wanna hear this Holiday Season is ‘Father Christmas’ by the Kinks because it is the only C/WH song that has the lyrical and musical heft to warrant repeated listening!!” (Told you I could get obnoxious.) It matters little that exactly zero people quake in fear at my proclamation and, if possible, fewer still (fewer than zero?) rush around trying to make the world conform to my wannabe-autocrat’s unreasonable demand. “Nothing but ‘Father Christmas’!” I tell the World. “Yawn,” the World sleepily and correctly replies. But obviously, if I expect that to change I’m going to need to make my case for the Kinks’ “Father Christmas” as the perfect C/WH song. So here goes:

I wrote about the unparallelled songwriting skills of Kinks frontman Ray Davies before. “Father Christmas” showcases some of the same skills I discussed there, but it also features Davies’s wry sense of humor, an aspect of his lyrical talent that is largely absent from “Morphine Song”, which is the post-Kinks Ray Davies gem I discuss in that earlier post. In “Father Christmas” Davies’s humor and sense of compassion are both on display and he blends them with his nostalgic tendency to an overall satisfying effect.

Although “Father Christmas” opens with some pretty anodyne Christmas bells meant to lull us, give us a false sense of the song’s ultimate tone, once the guitars kick in it is unmistakable just how aggressively rock ‘n’ roll the song will be. The Kinks’ first two big hit singles—“You Really Got Me'' followed by “All Day and All of the Night”—were both prrrrrettty hard rock by 1964 standards (the former song, especially, was very influential for the hard rock and punk rock acts to follow), which led many to think that loud, guitar riff-driven rock was the Kinks’ default “style”. But that was never really the case. Most of the singles that followed “YRGM” and “ADaAotN” were more acoustic—gentler, even, performed in a variety of musical styles. The Kinks were quite capable of kicking out the jams but they didn’t really do that many so-called hard rock songs, and Ray, even in the early years, composed songs ranging in format from hard rock (“You Really Got Me”) to music hall (“Sunny Afternoon”) to calypso (“Apeman”), which makes their 1977 choice to do a Christmas song in a hard rocking, proto-punk style noteworthy.

It’s a good choice that serves the overall purpose of the song well; there is inherent humor in doing an aggressive Christmas song—aggression being incompatible with what most people would consider the spirit of the season—but the chosen style is about more than just jarring juxtaposition. The song’s opening is both musically and, relatively quickly, lyrically violent, the driving drums and squealing guitars leading into a first segment in which the narrator recounts his last experience as a department store Santa when he was assaulted by a gang of underprivileged children. But the lyrics are never just one thing: They are, by turns, wistful, violent, funny (the rampaging kids “knocked my reindeer to the floor”!), humanistic, contemplative, and pleading. The threats the kids make—”We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it [i.e., the money] over...Give all the toys/ To the little rich boys”—include an implicit class critique: “Little rich boys”, who already live in the lap of luxury, may be impressed by such trifles as Steve Austin outfits, jigsaws, cuddly toys, and Monopoly money but the poor kids that Davies ultimately asks us to sympathize with don't want or need fake money: “We only want the real McCoy.”

But their rationale is not mere avarice. Amidst the humor and violence (and violent humor!), Ray gives us insight into the understandable and sympathetic psychology of the underprivileged kids. The lyrical crux of the song comes during the second bridge as one of the poor kids tells faux-Santa, in another wonderful juxtaposition that goes from touching to comical, what he really needs for Christmas:  

But give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one

He's got lots of mouths to feed

But if you've got one, I'll have a machine gun

So I can scare all the kids down the street

Here Davies gives us the pathos of the poor kid who is old enough to realize the financial straits his family is in because of his father’s joblessness, yet who somehow remains kid enough to make a case for his second (less practical) wish for a Christmas present—a machine gun. Ray gives us a young ruffian whom circumstances have forced to be mature beyond his years; but at the same time he is very much a typical kid with typical unrealistic, self-centered, and darkly humorous desires.

Davies skillfully ties these various tones together with an earnest plea directed straight at us, who are now, as listeners of the song, posited as among the lucky elite; we are, in essence, akin to the “little rich boys”:

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas

Have yourself a good time

But remember the kids who got nothin'

While you're drinkin' down your wine

Ultimately, these underprivileged kids don't live in a world of Father Christmases, of Santas, who make their dreams come true. Poverty and necessity require them to key on the practical issues that we “little rich boys” take for granted: We don’t concern ourselves with not having enough money to make rent; we don’t wonder where our next meal will come from; we are not worried that our fathers won’t be gainfully and permanently employed. This song is the holiday version of the Kinks’ earlier hit song “Dead End Street”, in which Ray also explored the plight of the underprivileged. The third line of that song lays the issue out in stark terms: “Out of work and got no money.” In “Father Christmas”, Ray assures us that the coming of the holiday season does not substantively change lives immersed in that reality; Santa can’t fix chronic want and unrelenting poverty.

But do you want to know who can? You can, Ray suggests. So by all means, enjoy “drinking down your wine” this holiday season. But more important: “Remember the kids who got nothin’”—and do something for them. They are everywhere around us.

When I was small I believed in Santa Claus
Though I knew it was my dad
And I would hang up my stocking at Christmas
Open my presents and I'd be glad

But the last time I played Father Christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor

They said:
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don't mess around with those silly toys.
We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over
We want your bread so don't make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Don't give my brother a Steve Austin outfit
Don't give my sister a cuddly toy
We don't want a jigsaw or monopoly money
We only want the real McCoy

Father Christmas, give us some money
We'll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don't mess around with those silly toys

But give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed
But if you've got one, I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street

Father Christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over
We want your bread so don't make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin'
While you're drinkin' down your wine

Father Christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
Father Christmas, please hand it over
We'll beat you up, so don't make us annoyed

Father Christmas, give us some money
Don't mess around with those silly toys
We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over
We want your bread, so don't make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Selected C/WH Music Available at the Mercer County Library

Christmas a Go-Go

A Rock’n’Roll Christmas This and the cd above both contain “Father Christmas” by the Kinks

Now That’s What I Call Christmas! and its numerous similarly titled brethren, e.g., The Essential Now That’s What I Call Christmas; Now That’s What I Call Music! R&B Christmas; Now That’s What I Call Merry ChristmasI; et cetera. Don’t let me influence you! You do you; enjoy whatever type of holiday music you want!

A number of Kinks albums can be found on hoopla

- by Tom G., Hopewell Branch