Failed Christmas Character Songs (Patreon)

Yep, it's December!  Time for me to bludgeon you over the head with more Christmas blogs! HO HO HO!

If there’s one thing Western Society seems to agree on, it’s that boring old Baby Jesus is waaaay too lame to build a whole holiday around. For centuries now, an ongoing quest has strove to hijack the Christmas fanfic by inserting a bunch of new OCs. The numerous physical forms in which the Santa/Father Christmas/St. Nick entity manifests are the most obvious example, of course. However, it took multiple generations, lots of cultural appropriation, and MANY bottles of Coca-Cola for all those traditions to coalesce into the jolly red-suited fat man who invades our homes today. Different regions have tried to wedge in their own additional Christmas figures over the years, some of which have continued to find pop modern relevance (hello Krampus), while others have struggled against the changing tides of taste (goodbye Black Pete).  I’m not interested in any of that stuff, though. Actual history and cultural heritage? BOOOOOORING! No, today I’m going to focus on what I think is probably the single biggest boom period for Holiday Apocrypha: post-Rudolph novelty songs and their failed attempts to sell new Christmas characters.  After all, what is modern Christmas if not a marketing exercise?  Bring on the mascots!

Now, before anybody says anything: Yes.  I know the character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer originated in a Montgomery Ward picture book, and the Gene Autry song was a spin-off of that. But let’s be honest, the song has utterly dwarfed the original poem in popular consciousness, and that song is what most of the subsequent knockoffs have used as their blueprint. It’s not hard to see why. Rudolph’s cultural omnipresence is so complete at this point that many of us just act like both the character and song are a part of general folklore. I still do a bit of a double take every time I remember that the Rudolph character is still under copyright (he doesn’t hit public domain until at least 2034). But that’s the very reason why so many have tried to strike gold with their own new characters. Think about the profits of owning a whole TRADITION! But where many have tried, few have succeeded. Gene Autry was improbably able to have lightning strike twice with “Frosty the Snowman,” another creation I can’t quite believe has official creators and isn’t simply a traditional folktune. And hey, if Autry (or at least his songwriters) could rewrite holiday traditions not just once but repeatedly, why couldn’t YOU write the next Rudolph? Just make up some lovable, cartoon-ready mascot, associate it with a catch jingle, and BOOM! You’ve got a steady stream of Christmas royalties each and every December! Of course, it’s not nearly that simple. As we will soon see, most attempts to write the next Rudolph or Frosty die a quiet, forgotten death… until some dork on The Internet decides to dig them up and make jokes about them. So come on! Let’s point and laugh at the failure of others! Surely THAT’S what Christmas is all about!

Since I already brought up Gene Autry’s role in initiating the “Next Rudolph” hunt, I think it’s only right to start with his OTHER major attempt to launch a new Christmas character: “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.” (Ironically,I don't think Autry ever actually released a version of this song himself, despite actually being one of its authors) Nestor sticks pretty close to the Rudolph blueprint, giving us an animal with a distinctive physical abnormality that drives others to shun him only for him to show them all by doing something that saves Christmas. In fact, Nestor one-ups Rudolph by saving the FIRST Christmas, since it turns out he’s the donkey Joseph and Mary rode. Nestor even got his own Rankin/Bass special just like Rudolph. Heck, Nestor’s song even name-checks Rudolph, just to make sure you notice the connection! Of course, that last one really underlines the whole problem with the song. If you’re gonna rip off Rudolph that hard, then why don’t I just go listen to HIS song again? And really if I want a sappy fanfic about Baby Jesus’ donkey Uber, I’ll just watch Small One. That short arguably has better songs than “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” anyway. Yeesh, just writing out that whole title feels silly. Like, I can take “The Christmas Donkey” or “The Long-Eared Donkey” or just “Nestor The Donkey,” but stringing ‘em all together sounds more like a parody than an actual Christmas song.

Continuing with the theme of misfits who have a magical Christmas happy ending, we have Burt Bacharach’s “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle.” I bet you had no idea that each of the jingle bells on Santa’s sleigh are apparently sentient, and that the inability to perform said jingling on Christmas Eve evokes such despair that one defective bell actually wept real physical tears, did ya? Well, fear not, ‘cos Santa summoned Jack Frost to freeze one of the tears and provide the bell with his much-needed capacity to jingle. And thus, the moral is… crying solves all your problems? Coping with what makes you different is less important than having somebody else come along and make you “normal” in ways that are utterly beyond your control? And what happens to the bell when Santa flies down to the warmer regions and that tear melts? It’s not exactly a well thought-out narrative, is what I’m saying. It is a catchy little Go-Go tune, enough for a number of Easy Listening artists in the mid-60s to cover it, but I’m still not all that surprised “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle” didn’t jingle for very long.

They’re not always poor unfortunate misfits, of course. Sometimes, they’re just helping out Santa because they’re so totally awesome and cool that you can’t possibly imagine Christmas without them! Like, say, “Sweet Angie, The Christmas Tree Angel.” What, you didn’t know your angel tree-topper comes to life and helps Santa put out all the presents on Christmas Eve? Well, good, because that just sounds like a recipe for some Elf On A Shelf-levels of creepiness. Also, what do you do if your tree has a star on top instead of an angel? …aside from remedying the situation by going out and buying an officially licensed Angie tree topper, which you just KNOW would have been a thing if this song became a standard. For better or for worse, however, this is another song that vanished pretty quickly, despite several covers in 1950 (including one by Arthur Godfrey, of all people).

Speaking of which, another fertile ground for new aspiring Christmas characters is the elves. Appropriately enough, the most well-known elf character is probably Herbie the Misfit Elf from the Rudolph special, but they never actually wrote a song about him (No, “We Are Santa’s Elves” doesn’t count, he wasn’t even AT elf practice that day!). Plenty of other people have tried to make elf characters a thing, though. My first instinct was to crack wise about Stuart Hamblen’s ode to Santa’s sleigh drivers “Hardrock, Coco, and Joe” if only for how retroactively silly the name “Hardrock” is. However, I have been led to believe that the entire city of Chicago would come after me if I mess with this one. While I’m certainly not above disparaging something other people love, the fact that “Hardrock, Coco, and Joe” made it up to standard status SOMEPLACE means it doesn’t really belong in this blog. (Also, Gene Autry tried his had at the song as well, because he apparently was involved in every single piece of Christmas media in the 50s) I also briefly though about The Commodores’ “Jerry The Elf,” but the only funny thing about that song is how all-consumingly average it is. Instead, I’m gonna focus on the TRULY forgotten “Sparky” by Bobby Wyld. This country ditty tells the story of the titular elf, who sucks SO bad at toy making that all the rest of the elves go on strike until Santa agrees to start taking Sparky along with him on the Christmas Eve, just so they don’t have to deal with him anymore. So Santa appoints Sparky to the job of plugging in Christmas lights while Santa drops off the presents, in flagrant disregard of all the warnings the fire department always gives us about leaving the tree lights on all night. Really now, even ignoring the fact that Santa’s putting the electrical wiring in the hands of somebody literally named “Sparky,” would YOU want to spend your one biggest night of the year weighed down by the one person who’s so bad at everything that the entire rest of your organization literally refused to work while he was around? Maybe Bobby Wyld wrote “Sparky” as a veiled attempt to teach children of the dangers of unions. Still, I’ll take “Sparky” over Harry Connick Jr’s “The Happy Elf” any day of the week.

Oh, and if you think it’s cheating to call Santa’s elves a “new” Christmas character, then you’re REALLY not gonna like me talking about attempts to get the Christmas Tree itself over as a character. Because seriously, this happens a lot, too. And no, I don’t just mean “O Tannembaum,” I’m talking about newer stuff. Besides, in that one the singer is only talking TOO the Christmas Tree. I’m talking about songs where the tree itself is personified. No less than Nat King Cole not only dabbled in this, but actually double dipped! Cole recorded the smooth ballad “The Little Christmas Tree” (written by Mickey Rooney, surprisingly enough) and the bouncy kiddy tune “The Happiest Christmas Tree,” both of which have the same basic subject matter: a tree that doesn’t expect to be taken home this Christmas but oh happy day somebody did and now don’t you feel warm and fuzzy about everything.  Admittedly, only the latter is actually sung from the tree's perspective, but come on!  I couldn't ignore an overlap like that! It’s the same basic Rudolph narrative if you think about it, just with freakishly glowing anatomy replaced with being smol. Plenty of other people have trod this ground as well, the most notable to ME being Richard Wintergarten. His “The Little Christmas Tree” is a totally different composition than Cole’s, and manages to be a thousand times sappier and heartstrings-tugging. Unfortunately, Wintergarten was also a thousand times worse of a singer than Nat King Cole, which is why I know this “Little Christmas Tree” better as an instrumental. Also, I can’t possibly allow the subject of littlest Christmas trees to pass without some kind of nod towards Christmas Rhapsody. Yeah, it’s a Rifftrax short instead of a song, but it captures the silliness of this whole concept far better than I ever could.  (I also need to shout out Lisa Miller’s “The Loneliest Christmas Tree” which inverts the formula to be tragic, though the end result is more unintentionally hilarious than anything)

Now, at one point, when I was laying out the rough draft of this blog (yes, this rambling mess is actually the POLISHED version) I thought this next one was going to be the climax, the big finish. I thought the punchline was going to be the shocking reveal that Nestor wasn’t the ONLY “Christmas Donkey.” Nope, there is also Lou Monte’s “Dominick the Donkey.” The “Italian Christmas Donkey” to be more specific. Oh yeah, that’s a thing. Much like “Hardrock, Coco, and Joe,” I probably shouldn’t be including Dominick on this list anyway, since apparently he did indeed succeed in becoming a thing in the more Italian-American-heavy regions of the Northeast. Still, the whole thing seems so weird to the REST of us, so much like a parody of bad Christmas tunes, that I couldn’t resist this chance to laugh at the Donkey Santa has to use because the reindeer can’t get over the rocky hills of Italy. I also can’t pass up a chance to laugh at the smattering of think pieces that complain about how offensive Dominick is to Italians… despite ACTUAL Italian-Americans writing their own accounts of the song being a source of racial pride when they were growing up. But hey, what do THEY know about what they should be offended by? (Now, if you wanna get riled up about a song that actually has it coming, go check out Lorene Mann’s “Indian Santa Claus.”) Frankly, I think we should actually be offended by how ungodly ANNOYING “Dominick the Donkey” is, with an ear-piercing “HEE HAW” constantly interrupting the chorus. This is the kind of Christmas song you should only play when you want to clear out a room after the party’s over. And yet, it’s still not the big finish of this blog.

Hey, you know how acclaimed historical documentary Toy Story taught us all about how The Space Race made cowboys seem totally lame to kids in the late 50s/early 60s? Well, it turns out that cowboys weren’t the only ones having to compete with spacemen, Santa was struggling to stay relevant too. Go rooting through any kitschy 50s aesthetic blog and eventually you find some laughably of-their-time pictures of Santa flying around on a rocket instead of a sleigh. No, Arthur Christmas didn’t come up with this idea, it was apparently a pretty big thing for a few years, enough to even infect the Christmas music industry. Seriously, there were so many Space Age Santa songs cranked out for a few years that I could probably fill up a whole blog JUST on those goofy novelties. So I guess that’s something to look forward to next year! In the meantime, I’ll restrict myself to just one example: “Space Age Santa Claus,” since it’s the only one I can think of that was popular enough to actual have multiple versions in circulation.  Heck, the whole “Santa in a Rocket” thing was apparently popular enough to even inspire a BACKLASH, with Tex Valen recording a song called “Please Mr. Santa” explicitly asking the man in red to stick to the reindeer. It’s a pretty lousy song, but you can’t say it wasn’t on the winning side.

Yes, the whole “Santa in Space” aesthetic died out right around the same time as the Space Race fad in general, and I’d suggest that the renewed prominence of Rudolph via Rankin/Bass was probably the final nail in the coffin or Rocket Santa. Now, obviously, “Santa but on a Rocket” doesn’t really constitute a new character, and one Francis Smith would agree. After all, he took it upon himself to try and invent an ACTUAL new character, separate from Santa, on whom to place all this SciFi silliness. And that’s how the world was blessed with “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son.” And by “the world” I mean the dozen or so people who seem to remember this thing ever existed, because Lord knows I’D never heard about it before stumbling across a random YouTube post while looking for something totally unrelated. But gosh darn it, I’m gonna make sure YOU’VE heard of it! Not because it's a very good song, this thing sucks. It sounds like it was written as a jangly Bluegrass ditty, but Smith and his subpar bar band backing him can only barely manage to drunkenly stumble through the most basic Country beat, and even then JUST barely. The poor schmuck on bass is especially dreadful. Also, it’s a bit weird that a song about Christmas in Space would be in a traditionalist genre like Country in the first place, but I direct you again to the harsh lessons that Toy Story taught us about the plight of the Cowboy trying to stay relevant in the age of Sputnik. Still, I like how this was an attempt to, even as a joke, create a NEW tradition rather than just overwriting the existing ones with whatever was trendy at the moment. But more importantly, IT’S A CHRISTMAS SONG WITH MY NAME IN IT! How could I NOT have a soft spot for a song like this? And of COURSE a Christmas song that name checks yours truly would involve retro scifi space ships! What could be more perfect? …well, a song that’s actually good, for one. But I choose to remain positive about this bizarre little Christmas gift. Isn’t that the spirit of the season? So be sure to leave some treats out for Solar System Simon this Christmas Eve!  And maybe commission a few covers of his song that are less dreadful than the original!

BONUS ITEM: I couldn’t find a graceful way to slip this one into the main text, because while it’s TECHNICALLY about a “character” I can’t bring myself believe anybody meant it to be taken seriously. If anything, it strikes me as an early PARODY of the very “new Christmas character” trend I’ve been cracking wise about. Still, I can’t let you go without inflicting “The Man With The Mistletoe Mustache” on you. Man, if you thought people get weirded out by “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” just imagine if THIS had ever become a thing…