Artist: Alabama
Released: circa 1990
In a generation that has yet to heed the warnings of Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas about the over-commercialization of Christmastime, many professional musicians see the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ as a quick and easy way to milk the proverbial cash cow for all she's worth. As the royalties of many time-honored standards and Christmas hymns are exceedingly cheap or--indeed--free, this is an easy way for brand-name artists to phone it in and bring home the bling with a minimal amount of effort exhausted.
In some cases, an artist will attempt to really hit a holiday home run by creating the world's next Christmas classic, the next "Frosty the Snowman" or the next "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer," if you will. And yet history tells us that a classic Christmas character cannot be invented through song in the era succeeding the 1950's (i.e., when "Frosty the Snowman" was written and recorded). The innocence of Christmas has been lost, therefore sincerity is impossible to achieve.
The banjo-playing beer swilling country quartet known as "Alabama" saw fit to challenge this assumption, however. In the early 1990's, they wrote and released a song about a magical Christmas bear called "Thistlehair." Already sound like a recipe for ill-placed nonsense? Let's take a closer look:
Unlike his magical Christmas forefathers, Thistlehair has no back story. His introduction in the song is simply:
And in them (sic) woods there lives a bear
Known to all as Thistlehair.
The Rudolph saga gives us a poignant insight into his psychological abuse as a young buck, and how God's twisted design of a mutated glowing red nose gives him value to the North Pole society once it is deemed useful. Likewise, Frosty's creation is fully disclosed within the lyrics of the song.
What of this mystical roving bear? What does he do? I give you the chorus, the pièce de résistance, if you will:
Oh, Thistlehair the Christmas bear
Spreadin' the good news everywhere.
About Christmas time and what it means
To all the children of the world.
Every little boy and girl
Out there, love Thistlehair.
So Thistlehair is an eight-foot, 1200 pound bear with razor-sharp teeth and is used as a vehicle for spreading the word of peace on earth and good will toward men? To children?!?
But I digress. The second verse:
He comes around this time of year
Spreading lots of Christmas cheer.
The kids all love this shiny coat
And the smell of honey on his nose.
He tells them all about that star
And everything that it stands for.
The birthday we all celebrate
Is still our favorite holiday.
I have it on good authority after the release of this song, more than 600 children were killed or grievously injured in bear-related attacks. The main reason cited in the reports were "children attempted to feel the bear's shiny coat" or "children attempted to smell honey on his nose."
While a deformed reindeer could be of potential danger to children, lore never mentions any of Santa's beasts of burden intermingling with children. And a snowman turned living-snowman doesn't seem to be dangerous in the least. (Unless....)
Third verse:
Wherever you find old Thistlebear
There'll be music in the air.
He dances 'round the Christmas tree
Every single New Year's eve.
Then he and all his furry friends
Gatherin 'round the fire again
Singin' 'bout those angels' wings
Gifts of love that Christmas brings.
In short, this song doesn't describe any event in particular, but is more of a characterization of a bear who:
- Lives outside the woods of some nondescript hamlet.
- Is known as Thistlehair.
- Spreads the news about what Christmas means (i.e., Christmas cheer) through undisclosed methods.
- Has a shiny coat and a nose that smells like honey.
- Dances around a Christmas tree every New Year's Eve.
...and that's about it folks! For these reasons and several more involving hearing the pain-staking country twang of Alabama's voice, this song has earned Drew's stamp of "Worst Christmas Songs of All-Time."
Here's an artist's rendition of what Thistlehair probably looks like:
1 comment:
Your critique of the Worst Songs of All Time should not be limited to Christmas songs. This should be a running series. I very much enjoyed reading this, especially the part about Alabama's description of the bear.
A nose that smells like honey? It sounds as though they tried to rip off Winnie The Pooh in their description of his appearance and mannerisms.
I especially liked these two lines in the second verse, and the attempted rhyme:
"He tells them all about that star
And everything that it stands for."
Star and For. Redneck pronunciation mutilation at its finest.
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