Kiss This Guy, $WINTERHOLIDAY version

[beetiger]

I went to a UU caroling event last night. Now, UUs are very well known for screwing with the lyrics of songs they don't care for. (Ob joke: Why are UUs such crappy hymn singers? They're always looking ahead to see if they agree with the words in the next verse.) This is particularly dramatic during the Christmas season, as the hymnal takes out all of the references to Christ, Lord, Jesus, and Savior, and replaces them with stuff about truth and love, even when it makes no sense. This has the net effect of making the songs sound just *wrong*, especially since about a third of the people, either in defiance or by not looking at the words of songs they already know, sing the original. I'm not personally a fan of bowdlerization; I'd rather sing originals, and understand them simultaneously in their original context and mine.

I'm not used to this happening with the "secular" carols, though. Imagine my surprise then, when singing Winter Wonderland, when we got to the snowman verse on the song sheet someone had handed out, to come across: "We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman/ until the alligators knock him down..." Alligators? Not "other kiddies"? What's up? Are we afraid of mentioning the cruelty of children to children, afraid this will undermine our espousal of the worth and dignity of every human being? Is this okay somehow in the anthropomorphic animal world, though, since Rudolph was untouched? Are we having our Christmas at Busch Gardens or something? Did I somehow miss ever hearing about the presence of alligators at the North Pole?

We laughed a lot when we realized the lyric sheets were randomly culled from the internet, and wrote it off to some family's quirk. I tried to figure out who by doing a Google search this morning, but apparently this variant is somewhat popular.

So, if you want to build a Unitarian creche this year, leave the little doll of the Christ child out of the manger. We don't need it. You can put a toy alligator in there instead.

Comments

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

*lmao* I'll have to remember that about the alligators.

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

Hmm..I'm going to have to look that one up in our Christmas song book this year at Christmas eve. ;) I hadn't heard the alligator one, but I have gotten annoyed at some of the changes of the hymns, especially when they're sung ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

[serenainverse.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Oh, that makes my day.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

As best I can tell, the lines that are replaced are:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say, "Are you married?"
We'll say, "No, man... but you can do the job when you're in town."

So... I could potentially see UUs objecting to the marriage part being in there. Plus Parson is a fairly clearly Christian title.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

lapis_lazuli and I were just chatting, the other day, about singing it "Rabbi Cohen" instead of "Parson Brown."

(And yes, I realize that Cohen doesn't rhyme with 'town').

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Well, if you pronounce "town" like "tone" and use only one syllable for "Cohen"... oh, nevermind.

Filks don't have to rhyme anyway.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's the verse before. This verse, the way I learned it, goes: "In the meadow we can build a snowman/And pretend that he's a circus clown/ We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman/Until the other kiddies knock him down."

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Huh, I don't recall there being a second verse that wasn't pretty much repetition of the first one.

[fenton.livejournal.com]

Actually, I believe the origional *is* Parson Brown. The one you learned was probably *already* Bowlderized to remove those references... thus explaining why you ended up with a *different* version, also Bowlderized from the original to remove the same references.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*giggle*

A week or so ago I went along with a friend and a friend of his to something called 'Tuba Christma' - carols besieged by the lugubrious tones of about a hundred tubas. The idea was, the tubas would perform a verse of a carol, then keep going and the audience would join in; lyrics sheets were handed out to refresh your memory.

I knew none of the carols that are about Christ. A few words of them, but once they get to the part about the religion, I just get lost. Before I acquired a lyrics sheet I was singing things like "And her's where I don't knooooow the words/because it's all about Jesus/and I'm a heeeeathen freak...". I managed to resist the "Rubber Cigar" version of "We Three Kings", but I kept on wanting to drift into the doo-wop rendition from the "Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas" show from some time ago.

The only one I do know, "Deck The Halls", I sang a funny version of anyway, because I pretty much overwrote it with "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie", a mostly-nonsense filk from the comic strip Pogo. Somehow, I think half the fun of caroling is playing with the words.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

The only carols we ever sang at my atheist father's house were the Pogo ones and Tom Lehrer's christmas song. And yet I still grew up with an intense dislike of Christmas... don't know what the heck happened there.

[schitzie.livejournal.com]

I no gots an aligator... *poiuts*

OOOOH! You live in New York!!!! You can send me one from the sewers please?!?!?!?