Something to Drive Away the Holiday Glurge

[ecosophia]

'Tis the season -- meaning, in this case, the season for 55-gallon barrels of fake sentiment and slithery Christmas music. Yes, I know there's a lot of really fine Christmas music out there, from haunting medieval carols to 19th-century classics such as "O Holy Night," but for some reason all of it's vanished without a trace here in southern New England. What we get instead is buckets of stickily sweet glurge about sleighs and snow and presents and Santa Claus, all sung in the kind of oleaginous voice that makes you long to stopper the mouth in question with a well-aimed fist. 

Maybe I'm just middle-aged and grumpy, but it seems to me that the last trace of meaning has trickled out of our public celebrations of Christmas. I hope the Christians, at least, still remember that the official excuse for all this hoopla used to be the birthday of their god, and choose their music accordingly. For the rest of us, along the lines of my earlier Cthulhu carol, I offer this charming image by Corinne Barrios of one of the classic icons of the old, dark Yuletide celebrations, and a carol you can use to drive away the glurge. You know the tune. 

KRAMPUS THE YULETIDE DEVIL

Krampus the Yuletide devil
Used to stalk the winter night,
And if you ever saw him,
You would wet your pants in fright.
All of the ill-bred children
Used to pester poor St. Nick;
They'd whine and scream and snivel
'Til they made the old elf sick!
Then one foggy Christmas eve,
Santa came to say,
"Krampus, with your birchen switches,
Won't you flog those ---- -- ------- !" 
Then how the children feared him,
And they shouted out in dread,
"Krampus the Yuletide devil,
We'll be good and go to bed!" 

Note 1: For best effect this should be sung in an oleaginous tone, with the kind of tinny orchestration that involves lots of sleigh bells being shaken with mindless mechanical regularity. 

Note 2: Yes, I know that corporal punishment is now considered child abuse by the soi-disant enlightened. I suspect we'll get over that in another decade or so, once the consequences of having a society full of shrieking spoiled brats of all ages become too obvious to ignore. As usual, the opposite of one bad idea has turned out to be another bad idea...

Comments

[ecosophia]

Yeah, that's a good example. Also an example of why the current administration's push to remove excess federal regulations is going over so well in the flyover states...

[(Anonymous)]

I assume you've seen this?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/the-boring-supreme-court-case-that-could-help-make-america-great-again/amp/

Quietly waiting for Krampus to fan the flames of this overdue idea for Christmas!

We're trying to spread the focus on this one holiday out over the rest of the cycle with our two, but it's heavy going in this culture...

[ecosophia]

I hadn't. Thanks for the heads up!