Dear Santa Blogs:
What are you doing this year to provide us with a really good Christmas cong controversy? I rely on this every year as a chaser for all the good will and cheer being tossed at me, and so far, I haven’t heard a peep from you about it.
Grumpy In Chicago
Dear GrInCh:
Controversy to popular belief, this department does not take care of that particular tradition. Charles Dickens covered this in the Ghost of Christmas Present section, but I suppose you never read farther than the first part of the book.
I have observed, myself, a great deal of backlash against the souls who feel the need to point out flaws. A groundswell of complaint against “Jingle Bells” (which was written for a minstrel show entertainment, it seems) was being countered by yeasayers in August and September, and those who have been pointing out, as usual, that “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” incites gun violence and that “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” AND “Winter Wonderland” each try to smear Christmas with suggestions of illicit sex have been met with “C’mon, Man!” (Dibs on writing a Christmas C’mon Man song: although I suppose those folks who object to “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” as an exclusionary lyric will have a field day with it.)
However, inspired by that viral video based on the proper punctuation in “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (or what have you: one of the earliest printed copies of the song leaves all punctuation OUT of the title, perhaps foreseeing the problem), I would like to note that no one except folklore collector Walt Kelly has pointed out a similar problem with another mispunctuated Christmas classic.
Kelly was complaining about the violence done to the beloved Christmas anthem “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie”. I have not heard whether he ever learned about the expert who claimed the song was a hodge-podge of songs composed by prison inmates; I did not see any commentary of his on this weighty topic. Nay, Kelly was outraged by the inclusion of a comma in some misguided printings of the song.
He felt people who performed the song as “Deck Us All With Boston, Charlie” were ignoring the years of heartfelt sentiment behind this Yuletide staple, muddying the ancient and traditional meaning. As is usual with holiday purists, he was mocked for not going far enough by critics who claimed the entire song, with or without comma, was sacrilegious, an accusation Kelly found as funny as the comma.
I don’t know if this helps, GrInCh, but it DOES bear out the feeling of another scholar, Will Cuppy, that “there’s always something.”
Blogsy Babbles 