Vol. 49: Christmas carols for the excluded

Specifically: atheists, agnostics, and TV sports addicts

Oh my God. You mean it’s Christmas Day already? Have I been so preoccupied with squabbles among Jews and Palestinians and antisemites and free speech advocates, and belligerent billionaires bullying timid college administrators, that I’ve lost sight of what this rapidly expiring holiday season is all about, especially for those of us in the educated classes?

I refer, of course, to the need to utilize our superior intellects to extend December’s warm feelings of kindness, love, and compassion to those marginalized people who, unlike Christians, lack the necessary traditions to pull them through the darkest days of the winter solstice.

         No, I’m not referring to Jews, Muslims, or Blacks. They have Hanukah, Yalda Night, and Kwanzaa. I’m thinking of two other despised groups who each December must stand quietly on the sidelines while everyone else is singing, dancing, stuffing stockings, lighting candles, spinning dreidels, and observing portly men in Santa suits wriggle down chimneys. How can we deep thinkers bestow upon these outsiders the blessings of diversity, equity, and inclusion?

         The first such excluded group, obviously, consists of nonbelievers. To relieve their suffering, I have curated a series of “Christmas Carols for Atheists and Agnostics” that will enable these doubting Thomases to participate in the season’s festivities with all the gusto of their Judeo-Christian-Muslim neighbors. Imagine what a joyous day it will be when these apostates can join the rest of us in song, albeit with slightly different lyrics.

For example:

 ‘Joy to the World’ for Atheists and Agnostics

Joy to the world!
A brand-new faith
Is sure to make our day.
We’ve 40 different creeds
For our religious needs.
So now there’s 41,
Which makes it much more fun.
(You’d better go out
And buy yourself a gun.)

Joy to the world!
We’ve found a faith
That looks beyond this Earth.
They care about your soul
And now they’re on a roll:
For your eternal sake
They will burn you at the stake
Or load you with stones
And drown you in a lake.

He rules the world,
And there’s no vote.
Dissent is not his style.
They’re spreading his appeal
With missionary zeal.
So why don’t you convert?
If you don’t, you could get hurt
And wind up beneath a great big pile of dirt.

An even larger marginalized group consists of television sports addicts whose customary viewing habits are disrupted each December by all the special Christmas season programming. The following carol, as re-worked by me, reassures these outcasts that they are not alone, while offering them plausible hope for the future, even on Christmas Day itself.

 ‘Good King Wenceslas’ for TV Sports Addicts

Good King Wenceslas tuned in
To his television,
Though he knew it was a sin,
Sure to cause derision.
“Yuletide songs and eggnog spray
Always drive me crackers.
So I’ll spend my Christmas Day
With the Green Bay Pa-a-ckers.”

“Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou knowest, telling.
What’s this fight on my TV:
Louis vs. Schmeling?”
“Sire, it’s a classic tape,
Just the best they’ve got, see?
’Cause a Black man made folks gape
When he decked a Na-a-zi.”

Herschel Walker came to call
On the Feast of Steven.
Urged the King to hit the mall,
Though the score was even.
“Let’s do something kind and pure,”
Said the King’s friend Herschel.
So they went to feed the poor
At the next commer-er-cial.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should mention that when I first performed these songs a few years ago at the Franklin Inn Club, Philadelphia’s pre-eminent intellectual watering hole since 1902, the Club’s board of trustees voted unanimously that I should be taken out into Camac Street and stoned to death by the assembled members. I am here today to tell this story only because the assembled members were so physically frail, and their aim was so faulty, that after about two hours of determined stoning they gave up and we all went home.

Happy holidays.

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