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I’m Not a Grinch Odd Songs for Those of Us Who Need a Little More (or Less?) Christmas Cheer
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
December 2021
FEATURE
By Madeline Miller
2021�12��.indd 6
I
am not a grinch; I am just not a festive person. While living in Korea, I typically made a point to go home for Christmas every year, so I was never the one really “responsible” for Christmas. But, thanks to COVID-19, 2020 was my first Christmas away from home. It turned out to be the most festive one I had ever had, though my Uzbek (and Muslim) boyfriend had never celebrated the holiday before. While I still missed my family, I think my heart may have grown two sizes, like it or not. Buying decorations, having an open house with friends, and exchanging gifts with him with his child-like excitement were actually far better than I had expected. One important component of the grinch “teaching Christmas” last year was the music. Not particularly enjoying carols myself, I had a hard time finding some to share with my boyfriend that did not sound either too sappy, overplayed, or rape-y – ones that I “approve” of, if you will. Our original playlist, at his request, contained the classics “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” and Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” He had already heard these songs, thanks to the movie Home Alone, so he was able to sing along pretty quickly. But this was a short list and certainly got very old very quickly. You can only listen to the same three songs so many times before going crazy. So, I took things into my own hands and started pulling up songs that, for me, a Christmas newb, and him, a non-native English speaker, were a bit more challenging to both understand and sing along to, but that provided a much-needed
reprieve from our “short list.” Faster beat, more culturally entrenched, and containing tongue-twisters for pronunciation all made them more challenging for him and more entertaining for me to let him guess what certain lyrics were. As a true Californian, I never resonated well with any songs that focus on “white Christmas” or “snowy ground.” Even “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” has little draw for me, since we only have a fire in the fireplace maybe a few times a year, if that. Instead, Dominic Balli’s “Christmas in Cali” hits home. The native Californian starts off by teasing those who have to suffer “the snow fairy,” and insists that he would rather be “where it’s 79” (degrees Fahrenheit) and “where all we got is sun and sand.” My boyfriend certainly turned up his nose at these lyrics; his conception of Christmas has been that Home Alone standard. Large, boisterous family with lots of food and snow up to your elbows are prerequisites for Santa dropping down the chimney in his mind. Granted, Northern California is a different ball game, but here in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the daytime temperature rarely touches the 50s, even in the “depths” of what we pretend is winter. When I was a kid, we would drive a few hours into the San Bernardino mountains to have a “snow day,” but I had never really lived the struggle of grey slush in the gutter splashing up to smother you with each passing car until the winter of 2015, when I moved to Gwangju. As we approach Christmas 2021, now that I am back in my hometown, I am already missing the crispness of fall and feeling a bit
2021-11-26 �� 2:47:08
