Summaries Are Not Funny

Not-so-classic Christmas songs short on cheer, big on yuks
Published: Tuesday, December 07, 2010
By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor

Stop saying "yuks." And "nyuks." Neither is particularly clever.

We all have our favorite Christmas songs. I like “Deck the Halls” because the words are easy to remember — every other line is “Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.” Even a bad singer like me — I make Barney Fife sound like Pavarotti — can fake the fa-la-la-la-las.

Hey, he's a bad singer, too! Who would have thought?

Another favorite is “Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives, a fellow Illinois native, folk singer and actor who everyone knows as the voice of Sam the Snowman, the narrator in the TV classic “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” (I’ve always loved how the snowman character was created to resemble the real-life Ives, including mustache and goatee).

File that little aside under "pathetically common knowledge."

And “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” by Vince Vance and the Valiants, as sung by Lisa Layne, always puts me in the holiday mood. Vince Vance isn’t from Illinois, but he does have one of the coolest haircuts in show business history, if one subscribes to the Don King School of Hairstyling philosophy.

But among all the classics we hear this time of year, there are a few that, well . . . aren’t so classic. Some of them are just downright silly, which admittedly can be appealing after six or seven eggnogs.

It's painful enough seeing Morsch try to be funny. How much more painful will it be to see him try and describe something he finds funny?

Songs like “Yellow Snow,” “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” and “Percy, The Puny Poinsettia” have a bit of a sideways slant on the holiday season. You can check them out on YouTube to see if they are appropriate for the office party.

"Yellow Snow"... how typical that this involves a pee joke. [Editor's note: Multiple pee jokes, actually.]

A portion of the lyrics of “Yellow Snow” — sung to the tune of “Let It Snow” — go like this (feel free to sing along):

It's "A portion of the lyrics GOES," not "go." He puts virtually the entire song here, which I cut to keep things at a reasonable length.

What wonderful holiday sentiments, huh? Nothing promotes holiday cheer quite like taking a classic Christmas song and changing the words to include the dog’s business. You will want to make sure you have one of those hard, scratchy doormats out in front of your house to give Santa ample opportunity to clean off his shoes before he delivers gifts to your house.

I thought he found this song amusing. Why is he busting on it?

Fortunately, “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” doesn’t have anything to do with negotiating the dog’s front-yard obstacle course. It’s sung by Yogi Yorgesson, the Scandinavian Swami (real name Harry Stewart). It’s a fun song sung by a guy with a great stage name. Some of the lyrics include:

Yet again, he feels the need to include a lengthy section of the song, courtesy of the apparently legendary Mr. Yorgesson. One thing I note - the song contains the word "knucklehead," a Morsch favorite.

Working yust, yolly and yerk — as well as other “Y” words throughout the rest of the song — tickles me.

Truly, the creativity it takes to put "Y" at the beginning of various words surpasses even Morsch's formidable comedic skills.

And I applaud the fact that a Christmas song includes the word “knucklehead.” It would be a perfect holiday song for the Swedish Chef character from the Muppets to sing to The Three Stooges.

Way to work in a Three Stooges reference. That's something we've never seen before.

As for “Percy, The Puny Poinsettia,” it starts out as a bit of a sad and pathetic Christmas tale:

More lyrics here. None of these sound particularly amusing in print.

Well, that certainly is sad. As the song progresses, though, Percy is saved by a poor little girl, who takes him home and sets him beside the Christmas tree, where he is “as proud as a flower can be.” It’s not a particularly cheerful holiday song, but it does have a happy ending, a kind of a Charlie-Brown’s-sorry-Christmas-tree feel.

I agree! That's why "Percy, The Puny Poinsettia" is such a perrenial Christmas favorite. Radio stations practically play it to death, don't they?

So if you ever get tired of listening to the old standards, give a listen to some of these more obscure titles. At the very least, the creative songwriting ought to be good for a giggle or two.

Just like the creative writing contained in this column! Right? ... Right? (Crickets)

The only shortcomings these offbeat Christmas songs have is that there don’t seem to be any “Fa la-la-la-la, la-la la-la” lines, which is probably just as well. Why, my high-pitched warbling will only annoy the dogs to the point that they’ll create more yellow snow.

You heard it hear first, folks - Morsch's singing is so bad that it makes dogs lose control of their bladders. Question: does a summary of three purportedly amusing Christmas songs count as humor? Maybe if you toss a few pee jokes in it does.