At this time of year the restless spirits of my ancestors catch sight of the tree in my living room and exclaim, “This is a Jew? This is a shmegegge!”
What can I say? When you raise children with a shiksa, as I did, Christmas is part of the package.
Lights, tree, presents, stockings — what’s not to like? The only part of the Christmas experience I haven’t warmed up to is the carols (least favorite: “Carol of the Bells,” which makes me think of a chorus of manic squirrels).
So I am not going to follow up on last week’s top-10 list of Frank family favorite film funnies with a Christmas music top 10, even though I have exactly 10 Christmas CDs in my house. They range from the traditional (Bing Crosby) to the traditional with a twist of weirdness (Leon Redbone) to various pop and jazz compendia, including “Christmas Time with Motown” (creepily, Michael Jackson sings “The Little Drummer Boy”), “A Rock’n’Roll Christmas” (featuring Bob Seger’s immortal “Sock It to Me Santa”) and “Comedy for Christmas” (which includes “Reggae Christmas Eve in Transylvania”).
We don’t listen to any of them. Here is what we do: We go to a Christmas tree farm, the daughters gaily, the teenaged son grumpily. We scope out a Doug fir that is the height of my fingertips at the top of my reach. I sprawl on the ground and saw away at the trunk while my unseen forebears scold and snicker. We get the tree farmers to lash our selection to the roof so it won’t fly off and land on somebody’s windshield.
At home we drag the living room furniture into the Christmas Configuration to make room for the tree. We bang the tree onto its spike and free it from its coils. We break out the chili pepper lights, the shiny purple balls and the tacky ornaments. We whip up the hot chocolate (now that the daughters are of age we have added a Silk-Nog-and-whatever’s-in-the-liquor-cabinet option). And finally, we pop “Hipsters’ Holiday” into the CD player. Let the trimming begin.
I love everything about “Hipsters’ Holiday.” I love that the apostrophe is used correctly. I love that a mugging, Santa-suited Louis Armstrong pokes out of a leopard-print frame. I love the border of holly leaves and bongo drums around the liner notes. And I love the liner notes themselves, which offer a perfect guide to what’s in store for the listener:
“In addition to boogie-woogie-ing, Santa does the mambo, gets hip, plays a lick on a peppermint stick, gets really gone [and] excites the little hep cats to jump for joy.”
Our favorites cuts are the songs we can join in on, beginning with Eartha Kitt at her most kittenish, purring “Santa Baby.” We especially like adding our “ba-boom-ba-booms” to those of the backup singers. Eartha’s Christmas list: a sable, a ’54 convertible (light blue), a yacht (“that’s not a lot”), the deed to a platinum mine, a duplex, checks, decorations bought at Tiffany and a ring (“I don’t mean on the phone”).
Pearl Bailey’s wish list is shorter and more to the point: a five-pound box of money — though at the end of the song she decides that if Santa really wants her to be his little honey bunny, he’d better make it a 10-pound box.
Then we scat along with Leo Watson on “Jingle Bells” and jump in on the “jingle-jangles” on “Dig That Crazy Santa Claus” by Oscar McLollie & His Honey Jumpers.
At that point we’re ready to dance to “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus” (Mabel Scott), “Zat You, Santa Claus” (trying to sing with Armstrong is tough on the vocal chords, but then, that’s what the nog is for), or the bluesy “Merry Christmas Baby (sung by Sonny Parker with Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra). The other obviously danceable number is “We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo” (Big John Greer), but my mambo skills have sadly atrophied in the 20 years since my wife and I took a ballroom dance class at the local community college.
It’s tough to pick a favorite on this album but I have to go with “Silent Night” by the Tim Fuller Experience (not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix Experience) because the Las Vegas lounge singer treatment is so crazily out of synch with the spirit of the song (the “hup-hup-hups” crack me up).
It is usually the case that when ”Hipsters’ Holiday” wraps up with the Coolbreezers singing “Hello Mr. New Year,” we are not done trimming the tree. At that point, one might think we would go to one of the other nine CDs of Christmas music in the collection. But no, we simply go back to Track One and listen to Louis, Pearl and Eartha all over again. Such is the power of ritual at holiday time.
Whatever your rituals, have a Yule that’s cool. And if you see my Jewish ancestors floating around, tell them I also plugged in the electric menorah and made latkes (didn’t get the oil hot enough).
