Have Yourself a Merry Muthaphukkin XMas

Around this time of year it's pretty easy to get fed up and cynical about the suffocating prevalence of Christmas music in every house, business, church, mosque, synagogue, and public toilet you walk into, but even after all the years of having the same twenty or so Christmas songs drilled into my head, it's still impossible for me to deny that at least part of the reason for the enduring quality of this music is that some of them are just damn good songs. Plus, there's still something about the manipulative use of nostalgia and naive optimism in Christmas music that gets me every time. On the other hand, there's only so many times you can hear the dog barking version of "Jingle Bells" before you want to punch the Salvation Army Santa in the face. So I propose the following as new additions to the canon of Christmas standards.


Spinal Tap - Christmas With the Devil

While Twisted Sister's A Twisted Christmas might satisfy your desire for metal versions of earlier holiday classics, they really don't add anything original to the already saturated market of modern renditions of Christmas tunes (also, there's something more than a little bit disturbing about Dee Snider singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"). Spinal Tap, on the other hand, half-ironically throw their hats into the ring with a totally original song that's not only truer to the spirit of heavy metal, but, given the amount of alcohol binging and and shameful hookups that happen at holiday parties around the country, it's probably closer to the actual experience of Christmas for most people than songs about virgin births and jovial sleigh rides.






The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)

The Ramones made a 30-0year career out of writing the same song a couple hundred times with different lyrics, because, basically, that one song fucking rocks. So what could be better at Christmas than "Blitzkrieg Bop" with bells and holiday-themed lyrics. Also, the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of domestic violence in this video is awesome.




Eazy E - Merry Muthaphukkin XMas

Though significantly less popular than Run DMC's "Christmas In Hollis", Eazy E's holiday classic is by far the better Christmas-themed rap. The production by Dr. Dre and DJ Yella puts anything Jam Master Jay every did to shame, and really you can only sound so cool rapping about finding Santa's wallet at the park and returning it. I'll take E's Christmas traditions of getting high and having (presumably unprotected) sex over chicken and collard green's with DMC's family in Queens.




Eric Cartman - Swiss Colony Beef Log

I remember reading this slate.com article last year about how wasteful and inefficient gift-giving is for the economy, because when we get stuff for ourselves we generally get things we need or can use; whereas, when we get stuff for other people it's usually worthless crap. Christmas is the only time of year that you can see television commercials for the impulse-buy items in the checkout line at Walgreens, and it's the only time of year that smoked logs of meat and cheese seem like a viable meal option. This song, off South Park's Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics album, is perhaps the greatest tribute ever written to gluttony and excess of the holiday season.