Festive Filth: The Twelve Absolute Worst Christmas Songs of All Time!
Festive Filth: The Twelve Absolute Worst Christmas Songs of All Time!
Ho, ho, oh no!
As a professional musician and composer, this time of year tends to nag on my nerves a little bit more than it would the average person. After spending the majority of the year writing and producing my own material, it becomes moot the instant Halloween ends and the world becomes dominated by ceaseless Christmas music through New Year’s Day. This often means putting aside new projects in favour of digging out a holiday fake book and preparing to perform the same carols over and over again at various parties and home gatherings until my fingers want to vomit.
In the spirit of the holidays, I want to offer my own take on what I consider to be the worst Christmas music ever created. I am sure that you all will have your own opinions on just what makes a terrible seasonal song, but that’s okay.
It’s perfectly fine to be wrong.
While most list-based articles will focus on the overplayed or most obnoxious melodies that used to be piped into malls when there were still malls, I have taken the time to search for hidden little turds of holiday spirit that have mostly gone unnoticed, and for good reason.
What I have uncovered is a massive Tree of Misery made of annoying jingles and carefully adorned with a hefty dose of demonic cow manure. I figure we’ll start off slow and easy, taking the time to climb this monstrosity so that the absolute evil that resides at the top won’t overcome us and steal our souls away in a Krampus sack before we have time to truly appreciate the horrors within. To be fair, I have included some well known recordings that personally hit me as significantly terrible, but have intentionally kept them low on the list for that reason.
Stoke your fire, marshmallow your cocoa, and come with me on this journey through the twelve worst Christmas songs ever made!
12. NewSong: “The Christmas Shoes”
You know things are going to get ugly when “The Christmas Shoes” is our first visit in the lowest branches of the Tree of Misery. Recorded by the Christian rock band NewSong in the ignorant bliss that was pre-9/11 America, this vacuous tune serves little more than to cheaply manipulate the heartstrings. I am well aware that this is low hanging fruit, which is to be expected this early in our climb. There is also a small possibility that this song is not that well known outside of North America, so this may be completely new to my readers elsewhere in the world.
Unlike most holiday carols that are about Jesus, Santa Claus, or the miracle of Hanukkah, this is a song about death. It is sung from the perspective of a cantankerous, middle-aged man who was played by Rob Lowe in the TV movie version (yes, that is also a thing). He is in a store, standing in line and a little dirty boy is pacing about in front of him with a pair of shoes. The boy tells the clerk that they are just his mom’s size before saying: “I want her to look beautiful, if Mama meets Jesus tonight.”
Isn’t that a jolly treat? It’s Christmas Eve, and this child is buying shoes for his mother who is about to expire before the night is through. What a fun and joyous song to come on the radio right after “Silver Bells.”
Making things worse, the grimy rapscallion is also paying for the shoes with literal pennies before finding that he is too short. The clerk demands full price while the boy frantically searches his tattered clothes for a few more coins. What a jerk! Despite my religious upbringing that rejects the concept of eternal punishment, this asshole is definitely someone who should enjoy a little visit to Hell. It’s zero hour for Christmas and this kid’s mother, and you’re that much of a prick that you need a few more cents?
It is then that the narrator/Rob Lowe pays for the shoes, allowing the boy to race home before his mother buys the farm. This is when the song becomes completely sacrilegious with the line: “I knew that God had sent that little boy / To remind me just what Christmas is all about.”
Yes, that poor kid and his dying mother were there for you, so that you would have a happy holiday. I have a great idea as to where you can stuff an extra pair of those shoes.
11. The Smashing Pumpkins: “Christmastime”
Here is a piece that makes you stare into the frosty night sky and wonder aloud just how did this band make such an inexplicably poor decision? When you think of The Smashing Pumpkins, you usually think of hard, depressing songs with lyrics that shake the soul like “Mayonaise,” or dark ballads such as “To Forgive.” Yet here we are with a strangely lightweight tune and its whimsical melody of Christmassy clichés.
For a band that, at times, looks as though they are about to strap their fans to a board and offer them up as a sacrifice to some unknown cosmic evil, this song is completely out of character and is even more hilarious for it. In addition, the complete laziness of the lyrics with a chorus that sings: “Christmastime has come / There’ll be toys for everyone / ’Cause Christmastime has come for you” makes me think that this was written by a 2nd grader and given to Billy Corgan as part of a community service after he was arrested for drunken driving.
The verses are all equally appalling and filled to the brim with typical Christmas banalities about decorating the tree, fondly remembering childhood, and playing with toys. A friend of mine once covered my head with two cans worth of spray cheese on a dare, and yet this song is still cheesier than that incident. I must make a note that Billy Corgan has stated his interest in creating a full length Christmas record, and after hearing this song, I hope that it’s true. The world desperately needs more laughter and joy.
10. The Cheeky Girls: “Have a Cheeky Christmas”
We’re only at number ten and we’re already entering some dark territories. If The Chipettes were human and had eaten their third member, you would have The Cheeky Girls. This song starts off as what you would assume to be a typical children’s Christmas tune with sleigh bells and a cheery whistling melody. Then the sexy starts and you realize that this is soft-core pornography set to a beat and topped off with a Santa hat. The video destroys any illusions to the contrary.
In the very first verse, The Cheeky Girls sing about how “we all go crazy” while dancing and drinking heavily at a Christmas party. Very soon, the guys join in to “get sexy in the snow” before they “take the reins and hold on tight” because this is going to be one heck of a lucky night for them. I have to give The Cheeky Girls credit for showcasing how sexual assault can go both ways, especially since this was released in 2003, fourteen years before the Me Too movement swept the world.
Regardless, basic decency is not going to stop these horny girls from having their way with you! They have made it clear that it’s a hot Christmas night and you are going to enjoy it whether you want to or not. If you’ve been good, they will even be your “special dish!” I wonder what would happen if you were bad?
The bridge makes the song as the duo sings about Santa “coming” and not in the traditional sense of “heading towards a destination,” combined with shots of the girls getting felt up by their possibly reluctant lovers. What a magical recording.
9. Dr. Elmo: “Grandma’s Spending Christmas with the Superstars”
Do you know what’s worse than a shitty, overplayed novelty song? A shitty, overplayed novelty song’s sequel. Combining the insufferable, nasally singing of the reindeer ditty with a melody that is painfully similar, and the fact that this track immediately follows the original on the record, this is less music and more state sanctioned torture.
The story here is that the titular Grandma, who was brutally murdered by one of Santa’s reindeer just a few minutes ago, is now enjoying her first Christmas in Heaven, surrounded by dead celebrities who all want that sweet, sweet granny love. Elvis is even consoling/seducing her as she is missing her earthly husband, but that doesn’t stop The King from giving her “the keys to a new Cadillac” and a whole lot of postal stamps bearing his likeness.
Heaven seems very materialistic, but I guess “The Christmas Shoes” already proved that. Grandma is shopping in the mall with Marilyn Monroe and even gets a “full-length mink” from Liberace who is swiftly played-off in a homophobic manner before the “send them back!” joke is reused from the first song. I would have thought that given Jesus Christ’s nomadic lifestyle and his attitude against worldly objects that Heaven would be a little better than the commercialized Hell we have created here.
Never distancing itself from “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” the ending returns to an ensemble reciting the chorus ad nauseam but instead of “sing it Grandpa,” we get “sing it Superstars!” If the computerized actions of “copy/paste” were turned into an audible sound, this would be the result.
8. Günther & The Sunshine Girls: “The Christmas Song (Ding Dong)”
Is it getting hot in here or what? If The Cheeky Girls didn’t get your motor running, then Günther and his amazing moustache will make you quiver like a holiday pudding. Günther became an online sensation with his breakout hit “Ding Dong Song” all the way back in 2004, a piece in which he spends four minutes singing about his dick that he also affectionately refers to as his “tra-la-la.”
Günther is the inventor of duck face. He is the defiler of humanity. His is the second most infamous moustache to ever hail from Europe. Listening to even a single Günther recording requires that you immediately head to your local fire station and request that you be hosed off after mysteriously becoming covered with jizz.
While The Cheeky Girls (barely) attempted to downplay the sexual nature of their song, “The Christmas Song” openly embraces its existence as musical porn. Between Günther’s tantalizing moans and raspy utterances of “yeah” and “mmm,” the lyrical content is more or less a description of foreplay only interrupted by the girls singing about Santa, the holiday season, and never, ever having a dirty thing on their minds. Oh, you tease!
Like most of Günther’s creations, the video is the main attraction. Besides a few closeups of his glorious lip hair (both with and without a festive lap dog) the majority of the time is spent showcasing the Sunshine Girls in nothing but fur coats or threadbare lingerie with only a feather boa for a top, close-ups of their bare legs, or the girls sharing candy from mouth to mouth when not slobbering all over Günther.
Once more, we are reminded that “Santa is coming” and you can bet your sweet bippy that he is not trying to be discrete! Two little people dressed as elves show up in reference to an old porno trope in time for the grand finale, and the girls ogle both them and Günther as they cuddle by the fire and exchange gifts that include a pair kinky handcuffs because of course it does.
I must admit that I absolutely love this song. It is a classic example of the “so bad it’s good” phenomenon. There is also an extended “Santa’s Ding Dong Mix.” If you are going to listen to any of the entries on this list in their entirety, it has to be this one!
7. The Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir & Chorale: “The Odds Against Christmas”
*Shudders* I just felt a horrible disturbance in The Force, as if a billion Jar Jars were unleashed upon the world. Oh wait, that’s just The Star Wars Holiday Special welling up again. A quick trip to the porcelain transporter to relieve myself of all this Wookie hair in my stomach should fix that right up…
With all the terror inflicted upon humanity as a result of the Star Wars prequels and the aforementioned Holiday Special, I sometimes have to ask myself: Was Star Wars even a good franchise? If so, why are only the original three any good, and if not: why do we think that the original three are any good? Philosophical questions aside, did you know that there is a Star Wars Christmas album?
Of course you do, because this is a listicle of horrible Christmas music and I just spent two paragraphs talking about Star Wars! It’s also in the name of the “group.” Get with the program! When discussing Christmas in the Stars, I have a lot of difficulty choosing just which song I consider to be the worst. “What Do You Get a Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)” deserves some honourable mention purely because it had its own single, and “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas” has an actual 18-year-old Jon Bon Jovi on it, so I just took my download of the album (yes, I have this), put it on shuffle, and picked whichever song came up first.
In a fitting result, “The Odds Against Christmas” won the raffle. The title makes me think of a Rankin/Bass special or yet another local news segment on the fantastical “War on Christmas” that is obliged to make at least three weekly appearances from November through Christmas Eve.
This song opens with an electric harpsichord providing an air of pretentiousness behind C-3PO as he recites a poem. The nature of this “song” is that Christmas may not have even happened, just like in 1647 when an act of Parliament banned the holiday throughout England. C-3PO continues to ramble off plenty of Earth history and references that come across as alien in a galaxy filled with literal aliens because Star Wars has no place breaking the fourth wall.
Finally, at 0:51 the song portion starts with the whiny soft rock vocals you’d expect from any other holiday trash and the lines: “The odds against Christmas being Christmas / Are 365 to 1.” Historically speaking, Christmas never began in East Asia, vast areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, or the Americas until centuries later, and the holiday as we know it never existed until the 1800s, so maybe fix up your math and dust off those history textbooks. Also, you forgot about leap years.
“You have a day / When love came to stay” says C-3PO, ignoring all other winter holidays (and thousands of years of human history prior) that celebrate such things in the Northern Hemisphere. So Christmas is the only day for love and light according to this self-absorbed robot. No Hanukkah in your ideal worldview, huh? Well, at least we now know that Threepio is a Nazi.
6. Milton De Lugg and the Little Eskimos: “Hooray for Santa Claus”
Used as the main theme for the 1964 holiday bomb Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, this tune is an assembly of all that makes a terrible song, never mind a terrible Christmas song. A choir of untrained children shouting as loudly as possible into the microphone? Check. Harsh instrumental segments that struggle to maintain intonation? Check. Sleigh bells? Check.
Of course there are sleigh bells; it’s just not a Christmas song unless there are sleigh bells!
Just one listen to this tune’s opening will plant it so firmly in your brain that you will require a chainsaw to dislodge it. I know. I have found myself playing it on the piano when that accursed earworm finds its way through my skull. This song is so annoying that it makes “The Twelve Days of Christmas” seem reasonable. And there is never a reasonable time to sing that.
I don’t understand why so many producers out there feel that screaming children is a desirable sound. This is far from the only Christmas song I’ve heard that was performed entirely by an inexpert choir of kids. My family had mistakenly purchased an 8 cassette album of holiday carols some thirty years ago and after hearing that every track was performed by the same group of unskilled children, promptly threw it away.
Those kids all got coal that year.
5. Matt Fox and AJ Rice: “The Illegal Alien Christmas Song”
Oh dear. We have reached a song that made the list because it’s racist. When constructing a good parody, one should always ask: “What Would ‘Weird’ Al Do?” This, my friends, is not what “Weird” Al would do.
As a satire of Jose Feliciano’s classic “Feliz Navidad,” the musical aspect seems to be a faithful recreation while the non-singing banter of a xenophobic uncle was glued on top of it in a free audio workstation. This thing premiered in 2009 on Human Events, and was quickly picked up by anti-hate watchdogs for its despicable lyrics.
Playing off of the most harmful stereotypes of Latinos imaginable, this “parody” shoves extremist drivel into every line to the point that it is nothing more than some skinhead-approved audible sludge that only the worst of humanity could possibly enjoy. Fox and Rice set a scene that implies all immigrants from anywhere south of the United States are only good for what amounts to slavery and the amusement of white folks.
In the last chorus, the songwriters accuse migrants of spreading diseases like bubonic plague and parasites like bed bugs just to make sure that your secretly racist friends will get a laugh and expose themselves for what they are before they can formally exit the Ku Klux Kloset. Guess which finger I’m holding up.
4. Tiny Tim: “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year”
Look kids, it’s Tiny Tim! You know him from that song in that SpongeBob episode, right? Let’s hear what he has to say for Christmas this year and… oh no!
For this tune, we have to do some digging. I am going to take you back to when I was a wee lad in the 1980s. Despite what Stranger Things and Ready Player One would have you think, that decade was quite atrocious. Nuclear war was a greater threat than it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The economy crashed because of reckless financial policies. The Falkland Islands were invaded. And a newly discovered disease was spreading around the world that was a death sentence to anyone who contracted it.
In the early ’80s, that disease was known by the acronym GRID for the poorly-aged title of “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency,” which would eventually become known as AIDS when people stopped being so prejudiced, and also realized that anyone could contract the illness. This was a terrifying time.
I distinctly remember my mother, who taught kindergarten, having to be trained in how to handle any blood-related emergency for something as minor as a nose bleed or paper cut. No one knew how HIV developed, or who might have it, but at this time it was only known that it spread via blood (and thereby through sex), and all blood was at risk until deemed safe. Teachers had boxes upon boxes of latex gloves in the classroom to handle any child who had an open wound, no matter how small. That is how paranoid everyone was in the ’80s and early ’90s about this disease.
So, Tiny Tim went ahead and wrote this heartless song in 1985, when AIDS had officially become AIDS, and everyone knew the severity of it. Apparently, he assumed it was similar to a very nasty flu and that it was something that could be recovered from with bed rest. He also seems to have thought it was similarly airborne because he describes Santa as having to stay away from all the kids of the world and even his reindeer.
Just imagine someone releasing “Santa Claus Has Got the SARS This Year” for Christmas in the 2020s.
3. Jan Terri: “Rock N Roll Santa”
At long last, we are nearing the top of the Tree of Misery. My Lord, these branches are icky. Does anyone else smell something or what? If you have to ask “How, just how, can it get any worse?” then I’m about to show you.
Let me introduce you to Jan Terri, a Chicago native who entered the indie rock scene in the early 1990s with her homemade VHS music videos. On one hand, you must admire her raw and authentic approach to music. She doesn’t let anyone stop her from pursuing her dreams, even a fellow musician writing a scathing review of twelve Christmas songs where she has found her way into the top three. On the other hand, one cannot shy away from the low quality of the songs from a compositional or lyrical point of view.
With that, here is “Rock N Roll Santa,” just one of Jan’s many recordings from the decade that gave us gross-out cartoons and Yikes school supplies. The song is fairly… okay at the beginning, then the vocals enter and add three extra syllables to the word “window,” and any semblance of this being an ordinary tune is fired off past Pluto.
Seeing a colourful cacophony of adults dressed as dolls, elves, and children sitting upon the lap of St. Nick really gives off a weird vibe today, but I suppose it was easier than getting actual kids to follow directions and deal with an increasingly rowdy Santa as the shoot progressed. I love how the shots are all too long and never fit the rhythm of the song. I know that editing on a VHS wasn’t as simple as today’s digital everything, but there could have been a better attempt so that we didn’t have to watch grown-up elves/toys dancing to six completely different beats for an extended period of time.
This song’s chorus will haunt your ears well into Mother’s Day and you, too, will be “Jumping around like a house on fire / Having some fun tonight” or you’ll find yourself on the naughty list for decades to come! I wonder why Jan thought a “house on fire” was such a fun thing to compare to dancing. Since when do burning buildings jump? I’ve seen them collapse, but never jump. Oh, well.
The next verses have similar uses of extended syllables on short words while retreading the clichéd tropes of the earlier Smashing Pumpkins song. There are toys, there are decorations, “chestnuts are a’ roasting.” The presentation is obvious and over-the-top, with visuals that reinforce everything the song states. It comes off a little stale, but sort of nice at the same time? I mean, one cannot help the technical limitations that resulted in some of the strange editing choices, and if we overlook that what we are left with is more or less a typical Christmas melody.
A Christmas melody so typical that it is almost like a setup wizard, providing the bare bones for another songwriter to construct their own piece over it. To me, this song comes off so threadbare that it could easily be one of the Sunshine Girls in Günther’s entry. I also have to point out the infringing video portion at the very end that was clearly lifted from The Year Without a Santa Claus. It’s just something that I find amusing, especially with today’s copyright obsessed algorithms and swift punishment for those who use a clip even in Fair Use.
What a simpler time those ’90s were…
2. Jan Terri: “Excuse My Christmas”
Oh look, it’s Jan Terri again. Am I a bully, picking on this one woman with her zany videos and off-beat songwriting style? Let me explain a bit. I had first heard “Rock N Roll Santa” in 2011 as I was writing my very first incarnation of what would become “Festive Filth” for my now long defunct comedy blog. Shortly after that article was published, Jan returned to the limelight with this song just in time for the holiday season and announced a new record: Wild One. I discovered this too late, and included this recording in 2012’s “Festive Filth” alongside plenty of generic country and western songs that, to be fair, never deserved to be on that list when this list showcases so much worse.
Compared to “Rock N Roll Santa,” this one just doesn’t cut it. Jan seems lacking in the energy and enthusiasm that made the latter tune so great by comparison. Yes, this is a downtempo song, but her delivery of the lyrics is just forced. It’s almost as though she is not enjoying herself in the making of “Excuse My Christmas.” She was very clearly having fun in “Santa,” while here her performance comes off as an imposition.
The music is a drudgery of Casio piano chords and sleigh bells that just do not sit with her singing. Jan’s voice also seems unprocessed with little to no space or levelling, so it sounds and feels as though she’s right in your face without any mixing that would allow the music and vocals to blend a little better. And if you thought adding three syllables to “window” was a train wreck of a passage, the words here are all crammed into as many beats as possible. Come the chorus, Jan is completely out of tempo with the rest of the song and sounds as though she is desperately trying to find the click track while still being able to breathe.
Jan is also highly redundant with lyrics like: “In Spanish they say: Feliz Navidad / Feliz Navidad this Christmas.” She is literally saying “Merry Christmas this Christmas” akin to how the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate is just a dumb way of saying Hands: The Hands of Fate.
While the technology advanced immensely in twenty years, this video seems a lot cheaper with its green screen use and poorly drawn Adobe Flash figures dancing with the most basic of animations. There was just so much more effort in “Rock N Roll Santa” even with the primitive video tools of the day! The difficult, low-tech approach of the past required passion to make something even remotely usable, and this comes across as a barely involved side-project at best and depressingly dull at worst.
Jan made up for this a few years later with her 2015 rendition of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which delightfully blends modern video editing with her old fervent approach to creation. If you think you see a pattern here, and you think you have already guessed my Number One pick for Worst Christmas Song of All Time, then you are dead wrong.
1. Nancy LaPlante: “Debbie’s Last Christmas”
Holy shit. Welcome to the little devil sitting on top of the Tree of Misery. We’ve made it, but do we really want to be here? I know I don’t want to be here. From high atop this muck encrusted pine, we are so far from any hope. We can feel the incomprehensible permanence of death, and the lonesome void of an uncaring cosmos. Listen closely and you may even hear the dark, maddening chants of the Old Ones as they sing to us the absolute worst Christmas song ever committed to tape.
This song is evil. It was forged from a volcanic shit pushed out by Satan himself, transformed into paper at the hands of Adolf Hitler, and the lyrics penned with the blood of a billion murdered cherubs by Vlad the Impaler. Unless you are morbidly curious, I highly recommend that you skip listening to this one.
With the arrival of “Debbie’s Last Christmas,” we have established the end all be all of worst music, period. This is not only the worst holiday song, but the worst song ever. We began our journey so long ago with a track about a little boy who was trying to make his dying mother’s Christmas beautiful. Coming full circle, this is a song about two parents trying to make their own child’s Christmas a beautiful one as she suffers from an unspecified terminal illness.
Opening on the same tired chord progression as Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” with a sour electric keyboard, the instrumental introduction takes no prisoners and lets us know that this is going to be horrible for every single moment that passes during this 2-minute and 47-second abomination. Nancy LaPlante’s nauseating, congested vocals enter and introduce us to the story:
Annie and Johnny are in a hospital, awaiting word from Dr. James on their daughter Debbie’s condition. He enters with a grim look upon his face and bluntly tells these young parents that their only child is just days away from dying. Neither of them have seen their daughter smile since her diagnosis, and knowing that she will not survive to see December, they decide to celebrate Christmas early for one last chance to change that.
Debbie is brought home with her favourite toys: a teddy bear and a generic mouse, and she looks forward to celebrating Christmas while her parents know that there is no possibility of her living that long. Debbie is bedridden, so a tree is placed in her room and Johnny will play the part of Santa Claus to surprise his ailing child. As Debbie’s health wanes, Santa shows up as planned and she is elated upon seeing him and even receives a cute little doll.
As Santa sits with Debbie on this cold November night, Annie receives a phone call. Johnny is stuck in a snowstorm and will not be able to make it home to play the part of the jolly old elf. Just as Annie realizes that the real Santa is in the room with their daughter, Debbie dies while smiling.
There is no Christmas miracle. There is no happy ending. In a world where Santa Claus is a real being, capable of magic and for whom there is nothing impossible, Debbie is still allowed to die. Her father is absent when the moment comes and he never gets the chance to see his only child smile for the final time. There is nothing good for anyone to be found here.
For years I was convinced that this song did not exist and that it was, in fact, an hallucination on my part or on the collective consciousness of a select few, like how only kids and some adults can see Pennywise. How anyone could have thought that this would be a great Christmas hit is so far beyond rational thought that one must ascend to a higher plane of reality to even begin to comprehend it. Did the songwriter(s) really think that this would be fun for the whole family to sing beneath the tree after dinner? Or maybe they just thought that such a cruel and blatant tearjerker would be so shocking that people would buy the record just to prove it existed. We’ll probably never know.
This is a piece that had the potential to make us believe in Christmas magic, to help us feel better about the tormented mortal world we occupy, but instead it chose to hurt us. This song hurt me. If you ignored my advice and listened to it, then it hurt you, too. There is no place in this world for “Debbie’s Last Christmas.” Like weaponized gas and nuclear bombs, this is a piece of history that we all want to forget, but ultimately must learn to live with and hope that we can ensure a better future for the next generation.
Now I’m sad. So here’s a bunch of people chasing a pair of llamas set to Yakety Sax: