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.