Monthly Archives: December 2011

Four Songs That Say “Holidays” Without Driving Me To Murder

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I should begin by saying that I feel traumatized by Christmas music. It’s all due to a former coworker, who shall remain unnamed because, well, I can’t remember her name. I’m trying to block out my wasted years in corporate America. Anyway, she sat in the cube across from mine and she started with the Christmas music around Halloween and didn’t stop until after New Years. And I’m not just talking Christmas music in general. I’m talking the Charlie Brown Christmas album. Over and over and over and over again, right up until the point where I was searching for the Necronomicon and looking for ways to get great Cthulhu to rise from his watery kingdom at R’lyeh and consume us all because that is just how badly I wanted to end it all.

There are a few songs that I think of as winter anthems that tend to get me through the holidays in one piece, though. They’re not necessarily Christmas songs or holiday songs or even any particular sort of song, but they make me think of barren branches and snow and all things seasonal, so what the hell. Here, have some music.

Jeffrey Foucault, “Ghost Repeater”

All of the drunks
Dressed up like Santa Claus
Ring Salvation Army bells
But the town square is quiet
The juke joints are empty
Everyone’s buying
What no one can sell

I don’t think that Jeffrey Foucault has ever once in his life sung something that wasn’t heartbreakingly beautiful, and I’ve long admired him for the remarkable poetry of his lyrics. Listening to his music is like watching a movie in your head (if you’re me, anyway), complete with mind-blowing cinematography. His clear contender for holiday song of the century is “Ghost Repeater,” and you can even download the mp3 for free from his website because he is. Just. That. Awesome.

Aside from some gorgeous Christmas-meets-the-death-of-the-American-dream sort of imagery, this song also contains one of my favorite pieces in the history of songwriting: “The wages of sin / Don’t adjust for inflation / It’s a buyer’s market / When you sell your soul”. I love this song. I love this album. I love Jeffrey Foucault, particularly when he’s saving me from the doldrums of holiday music. But I’m going to stop nattering on now and let you listen… here’s a live recording of Foucault performing this particular song with the accompaniment of the great Peter Mulvey:

Jeffrey Foucault, “Ghost Repeater”

Figgy Duff, “Henry Martin”

There were three brothers in merry Scotland,
In merry Scotland there were three
And they did cast lots which of them should go, should go, should go,
And turn robber all on the salt sea

I will be the first to admit to you that my holiday rituals are extremely geeky holiday rituals. Sure, I like the standard stuff like Christmas trees and lights and the whole bit, but what really sets the mood for the season in my book is the Doctor Who Christmas special and my own private screening of every Christmas-themed episode of Due South. Which is why this little ditty about privateers and tallship battles is a holiday anthem in my house — it’s from the awesome Due South Christmas episode “Gift of the Wheelman“. Plus, it’s just lovely. It’s not what you’d call a terribly cheerful song, but I’m pretty sure I was emotionally damaged in fourth grade, when the two songs we had to sing in class every day were 1) about a kid’s parrot dying (he’ll no longer sing koo-koo-dee koo-koo-da, for serious) and 2) about the Titanic sinking and how totally sad that was. (It was sad — so sad! — it was sad — so sad! — it was sad when the great ship went down.) So you know… I kind of prefer my music twisted. And my holidays. And kind of everything else, really. *Cough* So uh, here’s a song.

Figgy Duff, “Henry Martin”

The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

This list just wouldn’t be complete — but it would contain much cleaner language — without The Pogues. Personally, I don’t consider it to be Christmas until I’ve listened to “Fairytale of New York” at least a half dozen times.

The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”

Laura Veirs, “Icebound Stream”

I can hold a thunderhead in my heart
And in my bed I can dream a winter’s gale
And wake up drenched
A stormy pale, a stormy pale

Okay look, I don’t want to completely geek out on you and like blow your mind or something, but I’m not really kidding when I say that the theme of the season for me is Due South, which is why this song (and specifically this video) is my final winter pick. The Due South two-parter “Victoria’s Secret” is one of the finest pieces of television produced in EVER, as far as I’m concerned, and this fanvid for the episode set to Laura Veirs’ “Icebound Stream” is one of the best works of fan creativity I’ve ever seen, too. I’ve actually watched it so many times that when the song comes on my MP3 player the vid starts to play in full color in my brains. It kind of takes all the emotional points of the episode and distills them into a steely ice pick which it then jams right into your heart. It is just that amazing. DO NOT JUDGE ME. Instead, go buy Due South on DVD — it’s less than $20 for the complete three seasons, and it is well worth the money, not to mention it makes a super gift — and then you too can do a Due South holiday marathon! It’s much better than singing Christmas carols with your aunt Bertha or whatever it is you usually do.

Laura Veirs, “Icebound Stream”

An Interesting Idiom: “I’ll Be There With Bells On”

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As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m working these days as a carriage driver, and with the holiday season in full swing, I’ve been looking for ways to trick out my horse and carriage. These days I’m feeling like Christmas trees are completely passé and if you’re looking for some true thrills in holiday decorating, you need to look into the art and science of attempting to decorate a live animal. It’s a little complicated when you consider that the thing you’re decorating will likely do its best to eat your decorations, but you also have to contend with the possibility (okay, high probability) of blizzard conditions or just general moisture followed by sub-zero temperatures for hours on end. Your average decorations probably just aren’t going to hold up.

Our carriage company does most of the actual decorating of vehicles — and particularly for us new drivers, we never know which carriage we’re going to end up driving anyway, so it’s best not to get too invested — but drivers can help boost their business with a little bling. The veteran drivers all an incredible assortment of decorating tricks (Scooter’s Santa dummy, mounted over his horse’s back, is a hit with the kids while simultaneously giving me the willies) but for my part I mostly intend to spend my hard-earned cash on endless layers of thermals, snow pants, rain gear and chemical toe-warmers. Still, I’d like to have a little something to dress up the horses I’ll be driving for the occasion, so I have a few strings of battery-operated lights and I’ve been looking into sleigh bells.

My esteemed colleague Jim seems to find my efforts with Christmas lights laughable -- and routinely does his best to fling them off -- but passersby certainly love them. And when it really gets dark, the lights look like little stars against the black of Jim's mane. <3

I bought a few bags of craft-store bells that I’ll be giving a go, though I’d be kind of surprised if they lasted longer than a week. And because I like to live in a land of delusion, I also searched the Internet for real harness bells. I found quite a few places still producing beautiful, high-quality bells of all kinds for use on harnesses (I will take one of each, please), but alas, poverty and other priorities prevent me from actually purchasing any.

My quest did yield a potential origin for an interesting idiom, however. (That’s what I love about the Internet: you might be just shopping for something, but you learn some vocab instead.) You’ve probably heard the phrase “I’ll be there with bells on,” and it’s generally accepted to mean, “I will be attending the aforementioned function in my finest of finery.” Presumably there was a point in time where one might attend a party with literal bells on. (In the UK apparently the equivalent phrase is “with knobs on” instead, but honestly, I don’t want to even know what knobs are. If anyone tells me I will hear it in Graham Norton’s voice and all seriousness will be gone from this conversation.)

One possible origin of the phrase, however, comes from the days of horsedrawn transportation, when bells were often worn on a horse’s harness not just for the holiday festiveness of it but to ensure that other travelers on the road could hear you coming. If a partygoer arrived “with bells on,” it meant that they arrived safely having suffered no collisions or misfortunes. Or, somewhat more mundanely and assuming that everybody back then didn’t travel around with a large cacophony of bells at all times, simply that carriage horses were outfitted with bells for particularly festive occasions, the same way a partygoer would dress themselves to the nines for a special event.

The Phrase Finder offers an even more charming and detailed possible explanation for the idiom:

The settlement of US immigrants in Pennsylvania and other states. Their preferred means of transport were large, sturdy wooden carts, called Conestoga wagons. These were drawn by teams of horses or mules whose collars were fitted with headdresses of bells. George Stumway, in Conestoga Wagon 1750-1850, states that the wagoners personalised the bells to tunings of their liking and took great pride in them. If a wagon became stuck, a teamster who came to the rescue often asked for a set of bells as reward. Arriving at a destination without one’s bells hurt a driver’s professional pride, whereas getting there ‘with bells on’ was a source of satisfaction.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I will forthwith be demanding a set of bells as payment every time I perform a favor for a fellow motorist. Should’ve made the demand of the last person I gave a jumpstart to. “No sir, I shall not furnish forth the jumper cables until you reward me with bells! I demand that they be gleaming, sir! Gleaming!”

Of course, the phrase is pretty antiquated either way, but as a person who drives a horse and carriage, I suppose I can’t really point the finger at anything for being old-fashioned. If you’re more into the modern conveniences and highfalutin technology, perhaps you should take Nathan Bradley’s advice and replace “with bells on” with the much more practical “with sandwich in tow.” I think it could be the next big thing. As for myself, I’m now experiencing an intense urge to research the etymology of the word “highfalutin.” So maybe it’s best to just leave things there.