There's No Place Like This for the Holidays

Here in Seville, the holiday lights are major extravaganzas, like this light show in the gardens of the Alcázar palace.

​What holiday songs do you find teeth-grindingly irritating? Is there one that makes you want to clap your hands over your ears and run screaming out of the department store?

The public-spirited editors of USA Today compiled a list of the worst of the worst, the top ten most horrible yuletide carols of all time. I was pleased to see one I particularly dislike, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, earned the #2 spot on the grounds of sniggering cruelty.
 
I’d never heard of #8, the heartwarming Don't Shoot Me Santa by the Killers. “If ever a Christmas song deserved a ‘what drugs were they on when they recorded this?’ reaction, this is it,” said USA Today, quoting the immortal lines  “Don’t shoot me, Santa Claus, I’ve been a clean living boy, I promise you” to which jolly old man replies, “The party’s over, kid, because I’ve got a bullet in my gun.” Egads, when did Santa become such a badass?

Have you been a good kid this year? Well, have you, punk? Image: AI generated

If that doesn’t unleash your inner Scrooge, there's always the #1 all-time worst holiday tune, which is (drum roll, please) The Chipmunk Song (Please Christmas Don’t Be Late).

​Back in the 1950s composer and singer Ross Badasarian (stage name Dave Seville) was down to his last $200 when he purchased a tape recorder that could vary recording and playback speeds. He released the Chipmunk Song on November 17, 1958; by New Year’s Day it was at the top of the charts and has been a bestseller ever since. 

Mike, Melissa, Steve, Karen

​We kids thought it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard, and serenaded our parents with it day and night every holiday season. It's a wonder any of us lived to adulthood.

Trying to remember how annoying this song sounds? Just listen.
​

A few days ago I heard The Chipmunk Song (an instrumental version, gracias a Díos!) playing over the loudspeaker in a Seville department store and thought, not for the first time, that globalization has a lot to answer for.
 
Nowadays you rarely hear the Spanish carols, known villancicos, but I was lucky enough to catch one that same day in a small, backstreet boutique. It was Los Peces en El Río (The Fish in the River) in which the fish “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” (drink and drink and return to drink some more” in celebration of the occasion, while nearby the Virgin is washing out the Child’s diapers. It sounds a lot better in Spanish.
 
And then there are all the songs about being home for the holidays; there’s no place like it, according Perry Como and Bing Crosby, while even Elvis grew sentimental about going back “if only in my dreams…” Right now at least half the expats I know are packing up to return to their home countries for family gatherings.

Traveling at the holidays is not for the faint of heart.

 
But Rich and I are staying put. We love spending the holidays here in Seville.
 
The city is madly festive, with extravagant light shows on the Guadalquivir River, in the gardens of the Alcazár palace, and against the back wall of the Ayuntamiento (City Hall). Overhead lights shimmer and dazzle, cafés and shops are open until all hours, and although it is extremely cold by Seville standards (9 C, or 49 F), heaters are everywhere, enabling people to “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” in relative comfort.

​I got to wondering how expat friends in other countries were faring, so I asked two American couples living in Montpellier, France, about the celebrations taking place in their home-away-from-home.
 
“Paul just got an email from his brother, who lives near Seattle, WA, bemoaning the intense commercialization of Christmas in the US,” said Paula; she and Paul settled in Montpellier five years ago. “Here in France we find Christmas celebrations very low-key, in comparison. Now, in mid-December, there are still stores that are just beginning to decorate for Christmas.” I know, right? Can’t imagine that in the US — or in Seville, for that matter. I started seeing Papa Noel peering from shop windows in October.
 
“A few years ago we went to Annecy, France around Christmastime,” added Paul, “and really enjoyed their small but heartfelt Christmas market.”

“Black Friday sales are getting increasingly popular,” Paul said. “We always find that a bit strange. Here in France Thanksgiving is not a thing; as we like to say, the French call it jeudi (Thursday!). But still, the day after our Thanksgiving celebration, stores hold Black Friday sales, even though no one here knows why! (The French always love a proper sale.)” And who doesn’t?
 
We see this in Seville as well: many shops post signs for Black Friday, which sometimes gets extended for weeks. Note how this pharmacy’s display is thoughtfully paired with digestive medication for those whose tummies are already suffering from an excess of jollity.  

"Discover our promotions inside," says the placard, using the word "dentro" that also applies to your insides. Well said, farmacia. Well said.

Of course, in France food is the centerpiece of any celebration. My friends Maer and Mark go to Montpellier’s markets to eat something called “aligot, which is a regional specialty of mashed potatoes, tons of cream, butter and tomme cheese, served with a sausage,” explained Maer. “You don’t need to eat it more than once a year. Also, vin chaud (hot wine)!” Thus fortified, they brave the cold and wander about looking at the lights.
 
“Christmas Eve is the big deal here,” she added. “French families will do a late dinner called le réveillon, classically with seafood. There’ll be a bûche de Noël, which is a rolled chocolate cake, dressed up to look like a log (bûche means log) and attend midnight mass. I have to wait to get my favorite dessert, galette de trois rois (Three Kings cake) which is puff pastry filled with almond paste. It’s for Three Kings Day [January 6], but it’s so popular that now you start seeing them at the end of December.”

Here in Seville, the pastry shops have been displaying our version of Three Kings Day cake, known as roscón, for weeks already. It’s bland, soft pastry filled with whipped cream; I asked Maer how it compared with the French edition.

​“The galette de rois is a thousand times better tasting than your rascón,” she said. “But yours is more visually entertaining, like a bunch of kids got to design their best cake ever. Sprinkles! Gummies! More sprinkles!”

Seville's roscón de reyes

In these shortest, darkest, chilliest days of the year, we need all the sprinkles and twinkle lights we can get. It’s all about creating a sense of what the Danes call hygge (hoo-ga), a sense of warmth, safety, and comfort, a kind of emotional coziness of the soul that is sometimes defined as “cocoa by candlelight.”

​Now that I know about hygge, I realize that whenever I gather with friends, hygge is in the room. And with all due respect to Bing, Perry, and Elvis, that means wherever we are this time of year, we're home for the holidays.

OK, it's possible there is something more annoying than the Chipmunk Song. 

SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
I think we can all agree it's been a hell of a year. I'm taking a few weeks off to rest up for 2025. Whatever you may be celebrating this time of year, enjoy! See you in January.

​​THE AMIGOS PROJECT
This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the  isolation that's become a global epidemic.
See all my Amigos Project posts here.

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