A seasonal pet peeve:

[capri0mni]

A One-Horse Open Sleigh (a.k.a."Jingle Bells") is a terrificly fun song but is was never intended to be a Christmas Carol.


Verse 2:

A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side;
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot,
We ran into a drifted bank
And there we got upsot.

(nudge, nudge, wink, wink!!)

Verse 3:

A day or two ago
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow
And on my back I fell;*
A gent was riding by
In a one-horse open sleigh
He laughed as I there sprawling lie
But quickly drove away.

(*There's your truth in advertising about 'Winter Wonderlands')

Verse 4:

Now the ground is white,
Go it while you're young,
Take the girls along
And sing this sleighing song.
Just get a bob-tailed bay,
Two-forty as his speed,*
Hitch him to an open sleigh
and crack! You'll take the lead.

(i.e.: The horse can pace a mile in 240 seconds -- in other words, if this song had been written a century later, it would have been all about getting the girls with a snazzy hot-rod)

This post has been presented by the Protect Endangered, Singable Songs In their Entirety (Pr.E.S.S.I.E) Foundation.

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I think any song that's about winter and snow got grafted onto xmas, like "Winter Wonderland." It probably comes from a lack of imagination. ;)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Probably. And then, if you sing this song during February, when there's actually a chance of there being snow on the ground, people give you dirty looks.

Down here, we pine for a White Christmas, but we curse the snow on St. Steven's Day.

Now, I love Cole Porter, but that damned song has been a bane on twentieth century winters (imnsoho).

[pedanther]

Obviously my brain's aestivating, or I'd have picked this up long since: it was Irving Berlin, not Cole Porter.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

They're 'seasonal' songs, and since the western world (especially in a commercial sense) has thought of midwinter as the 'Christmas' season, the songs become associated with Christmas even though they have nothing to do with Jesus or Santa Claus. ;)

That's a good example of the secular use of 'Christmas', actually. We use the word, but it just refers to the season and the celebrations, no matter what it is we're actually celebrating.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yup. And the Christians (and Jews, Atheists, Budhists, Muslims, et al.) still call the days of the week by their Pagan names, even if they never give a thought to Woden, Thor, Frig, or Saturn.

By now, "Christmas" is the proper name for December 25, whether or not you actually celebrate "Christ's Mass"

What gets me though, is that the "Christmas Season," in practical terms, is tied more closely to autumn than to winter, at least in captitalist North America. It starts shortly after Halloween, and ends at the stroke of midnight, December 31.

I want to bring back the idea of celebrating a little bit on each of the 13 days between December 24 and January 6 (or, if you start at the winter Solstice, between the 21st and the 2nd), rather than focussing all your energy on one day, and then dropping it like a hot potato inside a lead balloon.

Ya know?

[brassfire.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, I love te full verses. I learned the last bit of the last one as:

Just get a bob-tailed nag,
Two-forty for his speed,
Then hitch him to an open sleigh
and -crack!- You'll take the lead!

A bay sounds much handsomer of a horse than a nag though, wouldn't you say?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does. But a horse can be both a nag and a bay; "nag" can either refer to an old horse, or, in slang a racehorse (which makes sense in this context), and "bay" is the horse's color -- i.e., a blackish-brown horse (a chesnut is reddish-brown).

Part of me wants to be subversive, and sing verses 2-4 while carolling in the presence of children (I imagine 7 year-old boys would get a laugh out of the second one). But that would shock their parents, and be naughty. So I won't.