Listen to this episode at theallusionist.org/mistletoe
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, deck the halls with boughs of language, fa la la la la la la la language.
In today’s episode, we’re getting festive… well, festive for 2020. Content note: swears.
On with the show.
This time last year, December 2019, I was finishing up touring the Allusionist live show No Title around Canada and the USA. The last stretch was a 2000-mile drive via some of the western USA’s most charming small performance venues and geological spectacles. And that allowed for a lot of time listening to car radio, and the stations were blasting out the Christmas hits - it’s a pretty different selection in the US to the UK, and after enough looping, gently meaningless mid-20th century holly jolly jingle jolly chestnuts, I started to wonder if they were deliberately trying to hypnotise me into ChRisTmAs oBeDiEnCE.
Luckily my Allusiobrain was able to override that programming, and started thinking about which are the most frequently used words in festive hits. So I set the Allusionist elves on analysing a corpus of the most played Christmas hits in the US and UK, filtering out common words such as ‘and’, ‘of’ and ‘to’, ultimately to compile lists of the top 50 most common words in Christmas songs. The top 10 are ‘Christmas’, followed by ‘merry’, ‘baby’, ‘year’, ‘tree’, ‘love’, ‘know’, ‘Santa’, ‘happy’, ‘time’ - and then they also compared the incidence of words in Christmas songs versus non-Christmas songs, the top 10 of those: ‘noel’ is the most common, followed by ‘merry’ in second place again, then ‘Christmas’, ‘Santa’, ‘sleigh’, ‘Claus’, ‘wonderland’, ‘jingle’, ‘French’, and ‘proclaim’. How did ‘French’ get to be number 9, way higher than the turtle doves and the partridge in the pear tree? Elves!?!
Anyway, with this data in hand, I thought: surely it would be possible to combine these words into the ultimate Christmas song.
And then, 2020 happened.
HZ: When I thought of this episode over a year ago, I wrote an apocalyptic Christmas song, because I thought that would be funny, a song about a kind of postapocalyptic scenario with like zombie hordes and radioactive animals. And then...
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Little did you know.
HZ: 2020 happened with different flavour of apocalyptic behaviour. And now that also seems like an inappropriate kind of song.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Right. Right.
HZ: To assist with writing the ultimate Christmas song - or at least a Christmas song for 2020 - I called in the professionals.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: My name is Jenny Owen Youngs, I am a singer songwriter, podcaster. Wildly my - somehow - credits include songs by Panic at the Disco, Pitbull, Ingrid Michaelson, Bret Dennon, Bundt, Zachary Knowles... bunch of people.
HZ: And you’ve got a platinum disc.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: I do have a - I should have known this was going to come up. Yes, I have a platinum disc.
HZ: By the end of this episode, I'm sure you'll have another one.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Yes, definitely.
HZ: Well, Jenny, it's just feeling to me that the canon of Christmas songs may not really fit people's moods in this year 2020, when I'm not sure people are feeling all that holly jolly.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It's true. Do you think that a great function of traditional Christmas music this year might be to help people remove themselves from their current state?
HZ: I think often what we're trying to achieve with our entertainment arts is escapism, while not completely ignoring current reality, because that seems almost insulting or disingenuous. And I think maybe this year when you've got songs about people gathering together, and being employed enough to buy presents, and welcoming fire rather than fearing it, as it has wiped out large swathes of the land on which they live, maybe it's not feeling like the right mood.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Mmmm. Yes. Yes.
HZ: Maybe it just feels a bit too much like Christmas songs are flipping the bird at us.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: And which bird. Not even a dove.
HZ: Definitely not a turkey; too big.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: A partridge perhaps?
HZ: Oh yeah, they're small.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: That's a fairly Christmassy bird.
HZ: Yeah. But it probably got evicted from the pear tree. It's a bad year, Jenny.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It is a bad year, Helen. So, yeah. How do we get to the core of the thing? How do we walk that line?
HZ: Do you do new versions like, "I saw mommy within six feet of Santa Claus?"
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Mmmmm! Hell yeah.
HZ: So I've been looking at words that really characterise the Christmas songs, the ones that turn up with most frequency. And I'm sure you won't be surprised that 'Christmas' is -
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Number one, topping the charts?
HZ: Swiftly followed by 'merry'. So, although people act like you can't say 'Christmas' anymore, it's still asserting itself in the holiday tunes - and the word 'holiday' is a religious word anyway, so you can't escape it. It's a very complicated, such a complicated occasion, Jenny.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: What a mess. What a fucking mess. Also, I wonder if it's worth noting that the ‘merry’ that occurs in the number two slot is M E R R Y and then Mary, M A R Y, occurs with the 48th most frequency.
HZ: Yeah, just under 'Claus' - as in Santa, not bird, turkey.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Ah yes, the traditional Christmas turkey claws, scattered around beneath the tree.
HZ: In the list of words that are more frequently used in the Christmas corpus than in wider song corpus: 'Noel' was more common than ‘Christmas’. Is that just because in the songs in which it occurs, it occurs many times?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Yeah, because check it out: the first song that comes to mind is 'The First Noel' and it's like, “The first Noel, the Angels did say,” lalalala. Then you get to the chorus and it's just like, "Noel, noel, noel, noel. Born is the king of Israel." So, automatically you're getting a lot of bang for your buck there.
HZ: Here's something that I found rather surprising: the word 'dong' came in at number 16. However, its partner 'ding' came in at 41, and is used less than half as much as 'dong'. What's happening there? I thought they were mostly in equal quantities.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: You would think that just naturally 'ding' would pair with 'dong' every time.
HZ: I would. Are there some very suggestive Christmas songs that I have forgotten about?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: I'm wondering if it's a situation where it's sort of like a “ding, dong, dong, dong, ding, dong, dong dong,” some kind of echoey thing where for some reason it's only an echo on the dong and just keeps going - or, you know, Helen, maybe we're missing out. Maybe there's a little 1080PHD out there waiting for us to discover it.
HZ: Do you think that sexy Christmas songs are feasible?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Well, I think there's a strong argument for 'Santa Baby'.
HZ: It's provocative.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It's provocative. As a child - actually, until very embarrassingly recently - I thought 'I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus' was a tale of an extramarital holiday affair with actual Santa Claus.
HZ: So did I.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: But it's just her dad! It's just her dad in a Santa suit, doing the thing that dads sometimes do, which is dress up as Santa, put the presents under the tree, get a cookie, and then get a smooch.
HZ: My dad, I'm pretty sure, has never done that. However, my father-in-law is a professional Santa. Well, he goes by The Santa Dave, to make it clear that he is an ambassador for Santa and not trying to act like he is the one true Santa.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Not impersonating Santa.
HZ: And he and my mother-in-law do have an affectionate relationship. So I guess that has happened to me in real life.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: You saw -
HZ: - my mummy-in-law kissing Santa Claus.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: - your mommy-in-law kissing Santa Dave. I mean, there's your song. Go for it, Helen. Reach for the stars.
HZ: When you're writing Christmas songs, which you have done, for yourself and others, do you play with the Christmas lexicon? Or is that not your way of summoning the festivities?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Well, I write two kinds of Christmas songs, I guess: the fun kind and the sad kind. Sad kind is just sort of like a regular Jenny song set at the holidays - that's when the sadness is occurring. I think I wrote maybe a dozen Christmas songs this year, and one of them is called ‘Hot Buttered Rum’, and it is in praise of my favourite wintertime hot bev that's like, you know, seasonal. I'll drink hot toddies all year long, if it’s a cool night or whatever; but hot buttered rum is a Christmas special. So there's not like a ton of special Christmas stuff that has to make it in there to make, you know... But to put together a song that actually feels celebratory, there is a certain amount of culling from this list. You want some kind of indicators, but a lot of the time you don't want to say ‘Christmas’ directly - or at least the worlds that I work in, not everybody wants to say ‘Christmas’, right? People want to indicate warmth, togetherness, celebration, without necessarily limiting it to people who observe Christmas, in, I guess, the kind of religious way.
HZ: So what would you go for there? Would ‘merry’ or ‘jolly’ be too Christmas-specific?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Hmm. I think ‘merry’ and ‘jolly’ are fantastic choices. I think I personally tend to lean in more of a direction of like, you know, we're toasting, we're cheersing, let me pour you a drink. That's, of course, not for everybody; but those are sort of like celebratory touchstones that maybe work all year - or some of them work all year - but like especially around the holidays. What are the ways that we know we are together? And what's the thing you do every year with your family or what's the thing you do every year with your friends?
HZ: Argue.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: That's also a totally valid path. But what is it this year? It's like: gather round the built in laptop camera? Log in to zoom most festively?
SONG: ‘Zoom Christmas’ by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick
It’ll be a Zoom Christmas,
The family gathered round,
Except grandad, who can’t work the app,
And irritation abounds
When mum and dad take half an hour to turn the camera on…
Then the wifi dies again, and we’re all back to square one.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Helen, if I never see another Zoom video it'll be too soon. It's rare to get 100 percent of your parent's face on a video call.
HZ: That's how they retain mystery.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: And a sense of authority! Looming….
HZ: But when you're doing the sad Jenny-style songs, how do you make them festive without festive references?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: OK, so this is the opening stanza of a holiday song, a sad holiday song that I put out last year:
CLIP: ‘Maybe Next Year’ by Jenny Owen Youngs
When I was a kid, it was boxes and bows,
Crossing my fingers wishing for snow.
Honestly, I don't know where the time goes.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: And then, talk about cutting down an evergreen and turning it into a Christmas tree. So I guess I've lied to you, Helen, and we've uncovered it straight away: I freaking said the word ‘Christmas’ right there, and I'm so ashamed. But then it's on to stringing the lights, the glow of the fire... We touch the word 'Christmas' one time and never come back to it, and it's not in the chorus; it's just more of a passing marker, like when you're playing Sonic the Hedgehog, and you get to a little marker that goes like 'woot woot'. And then every time you die, you land back at that marker. And here's where the metaphor really starts to fall apart, Helen: the next time I die, I'll end up back at line six of verse one, where Christmas occurs.
HZ: is the song about the cyclical nature of Christmas and the inescapable repetition of our lives as marked by festivals?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Well, alas, it's kind of - it is in a way, but it's sort of like the holiday on the calendar is just like a marker of how long it's been since the last time I saw someone. And how many more times, it's a one more time each year. It's one more year every Christmas that I haven't seen the person to whom the song is directed.
HZ: Which I guess goes for so many people this year. Maybe you already wrote the Christmas song for 2020.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Oh, brutal! I may have already written - yes. Correct. This might be it.
HZ: Speaking of repetition, a lot of the popular hit songs are so repetitious I am angry about it.
Holly Jolly Christmas feels like orobouros Christmas song. What does "holly jolly" even mean? I don't find holly a very jolly plant because I grew up with quite a few holly trees in the garden, which means there were always dried holly leaves waiting to spike you somewhere like the sofa, or inside your shoes.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: They attack when you least expect it.
HZ: Yeah. It was the tree that was the most suitable for being a climbing tree, but very hostile to human flesh trying to shimmy up it. So the holly was distinctly saying, “Don't come and jolly near me. I've made that clear to you.”
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: OK, let's take a look at it. I think this person - let's see who wrote the song, Burl Ives, of course, popularised it; but it was written by Johnny Marks. OK, I think Johnny Marks was like, "Two words that really make me think of of holiday times: holly, beautiful plant, just imagine it, just picture it set against the snow, the green leaves, the red holly berries. So pretty. OK, great, festive."
HZ: Yes, that's true. Festive. It's majestic, very shiny leaves.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: And then jolly. You know, we're jolly. Santa is jolly. Everybody is at least aspiring towards jolliness in the holiday season.
HZ: Aspiring towards jolliness. Holly is often referred to by the name 'Christ's thorn'. "Have a Christ's thorn jolly Christmas, and in case you didn't know, he died for your sins, you awful human," etc.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: So you'd want to try to land a rhyme on that last line?
HZ: I couldn't possibly, that's not what Jesus would want.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: OK, ok. OK, fair. I feel like while I agree with you that 'holly jolly' as a modifier of Christmas is not necessarily the most... Well it just doesn't seem to mean very much.
But sometimes I'm in a writing session and I'm like, this line I just suggested feels absolutely ludicrous. But then I think about a line that's like "Have a holly, jolly Christmas," and I'm like, OK: did the writer at that time think this is ludicrous? Was the writer not thinking about it? Was the writer like, "This is tiiiight," and then pulling on the vape pen, as is the nature of many songwriters?
HZ: It's quite a small pool of imagery and references that they draw from. So how do you come up with an original spin that is not so unexpected that people are like, "Nah, that doesn't that doesn't work for me in the festive times?"
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: This is what we're all searching for as songwriters: how do you say something that is universal or familiar or relatable, that has a very good chance of having been said before, in a way that makes somebody feel like they're hearing it for the first time and like it can resonate with them? Much like with writing any other kind of music, I think that what is a little bit counterintuitive about writing with the hope of having a broad appeal: a lot of the time you can get kind of like hung up on that broad appeal idea, which leads to lyrics that just feels so general that like anybody could have written them. So you have to hunt around for this balance right between again, like the relatable idea, but finding something that feels uniquely you.
HZ: A unique spin on a relatable idea, huh? Hmm, let’s see...
SONG: ‘Christmas Meat Sweats’ by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick
If there’s one thing I can count on
On every Christmas night,
Even if it’s too warm for snow,
Too polluted for starlight,
There’s a feeling in every part
Encroaching on my heart…
It’s the Christmas meat sweats
Like a brick inside my gut.
The Christmas meat sweats
Vegetarian version now:
Potato fugue state,
Carb duvet for the soul,
Potato fugue state,
Let’s curl up and sleep in a hole.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Are there any sexier foods or drinks that you guys get into over your way at the holiday-times?
HZ: I think the purpose is not to be sexy. I think it's a release from all that. The purpose is heavy and soporific.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: OK, OK.
HZ: Can you work with that?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Hrrrrrr, let’s see...
HZ: So out of the twelve Christmas songs you've written this year, none of them is about meats?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: No, just one about beverage and then a bunch about interpersonal relationships and celebration.
HZ: You've sent me a number of challenges, such as write a Christmas song about meats. But would you accept the task of writing a Christmas song for the mood of 2020, that it doesn't make people feel like the reality is a horrible, inadequate form of what their previous years might have been? It's a song to comfort them in whatever circumstances they find themselves in this year of difficulties.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: That sounds like something I was going to do anyway, so, yeah, yeah. Let's see… ‘Conscientious Objector’. That's a title pitch I have for you. ‘Conscientious Objector’.
HZ: From Christmas?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Not participating because, you know, fill in the blank.
HZ: Because you don't want to breathe on grandma and kill her.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Oh my God. True. Yes. Hmm. OK, OK. This is probably what I'm going to guess we're actually going to hear a lot of this year, is people writing Christmas songs about wanting to be close or finding ways to be close, making the best of it, you know, finding that optimistic spin. Are we collaborating on this or are we having a song-off?
HZ: What would you prefer?
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: I love to collaborate, Helen.
HZ: I brought in Allusionist composer Martin Austwick to help us. Cue quick songwriting montage:
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It's like rock climbing: once you have one little handhold, then you just build on that, and build and build, and then before you know it, you're over the inverted wall, you know what I mean?
HZ: Oh sure. You can't show me an inverted wall without me scaling it.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It's like Helen, have you noticed my fine - where'd she go? Oh, she's at the top! Thwarted again!
HZ: What relevance does mistletoe have to people's lives this year, I wonder? Poisonous plant with an even more dangerous connotation this year than usual.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Wow. "Poisonous plants with an even more dangerous connotation..."
HZ: "I'll give that mistletoe a wide berth this year..."
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: What are you saying?
MARTIN AUSTWICK: "Give the mistletoe a wide berth this year."
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: I understand those words, but I wish to poke them and see if there's something we can find that will make it a little more singable. "A wide berth!" Although I guess things immediately become more singable when you do this while you're thinking of them: "LAAA DAAA!" And then add loads of vibrato and then you're good.
"Going to be alone/stay alone/remain alone this year..."
My mom would be thrilled to know that I was jamming 'betwixt' into a song.
"Charms, charms, charms, charms."
OK, I can do this. I'm an adult. I'm actually a grown-ass songwriter. And here's how it goes.
"BADADADADA."
OK, this is looking great. This is one of the fastest songs ever. Wait, Helen: do you want me to do the instrumental and do you want to sing it, or do you want me to sing it?
HZ: I want you to sing it. Given that you're a professional singer and I'm certainly not.
HZ: So now, performed by Jenny Owen Youngs and the Allusionettes, here is our song ‘Don’t Wait For Me Beneath the Mistletoe’:
The usual lights are on my tree,
The usual stars are in the sky.
You would usually be with me
On a usual Christmas night.
But this year, that’s a hard no
And we’ll both be alone.
Don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe.
i’m gonna keep my distance
Till there’s mass resistance,
It’s a solo Christmas this year.
I’ll stay in isolation
Till the vaccination
Makes it safe for you to be here.
Don’t want a gift from Santa’s sleigh
Except for you to stay the fuck away.
Don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe.
Dasher, Dancer, Blitzen
Keep six feet betwixt them
And there’ll be no sharing hay.
Rudolph’s out on furlough,
You can’t see his nose glow
With a mask upon his face.
The best gift from Santa’s sleigh
Is if you stay the fuck away.
Don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe.
There’s nothing I’d like more than to throw wide the door
And you would run into my arms.
But there’d be too much danger to ourselves and strangers,
So I must resist your charms.
It breaks my heart to say
Please stay the fuck away.
Don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe.
Don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe.
HZ: You can send the song to people who are trying to get you to come to gatherings when you're not comfortable coming to gatherings.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Absolutely! Nothing says "Happy Holidays, fam" like "Stay the fuck away from me".
HZ: But it's jolly!
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: It is jolly, and that will help take the sting out. This is a year round song thing: sometimes you have to deliver a message that hurts. It hurts you; it hurts the person who is receiving it. But dress up your your dark messaging, your painful messaging in a jolly song and all will be well.
HZ: Well, Jenny, I am excited to tell you that in our song 'Don't Wait for Me Beneath the Mistletoe', we managed to pack in 14.5 of the top 50 Christmassiest Christmas song words.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Without even really thinking too much about it, huh?
HZ: Exactly. We used Christmas, year, tree Santa, like, night, want, make, away, heart, please, mistletoe, Rudolph, sleigh, and I gave us half a point because we said 'beneath' and 'underneath' is in the top 50 list.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Oh, we forgot ding and dong.
HZ: Strongly implied.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: OK, nice.
HZ: And I also have since learnt the etymology of mistletoe. The ‘toe’ is kind of mishearing of an old English word that meant twig and the mistle was from the mistle thrush which ate mistletoe - and mistle also just basically meant 'mistletoe' - and because the bird would eat the mistletoe and then shit it out, which would plant the seeds in different places, ‘mistle’ basically means birdshit.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Festive.
HZ: Yes. So don't wait for me beneath the birdshit twig.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Nice.
HZ: Well done us.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Yeah. Happy to contribute more of that to the Great Global Christmas Songbook.
HZ: It's much easier not to want to wait under that.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is:
yarak, noun: (of a trained hawk): fit and in proper condition for hunting.
Try using yarak in an email today.
In today’s episode you heard from Jenny Owen Youngs; go to jennyowenyoungs.com to hear her music, which is also on Spotify and Bandcamp etc, and she’s doing some festive livestream concerts which will be brilliant. And, Jenny cohosts the podcasts Buffering the Vampire Slayer, and Veronica Mars Investigations which also features your friendly neighbourhood Helen Zaltzman.
Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com wrote and performed music on this episode, as well as conducting linguistic analysis of the Christmas hit corpus.
Thanks also to Helena Kosinski and Rachele De Felice.
If you want to listen to Don’t Wait For Me Beneath the Mistletoe on its own, without a podcast either side of it, you can find The Allusionettes on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple and Youtube. All sales of the song will be donated to the Trussell Trust, and I’ll match the donation, so if you buy the song, you’ll be getting a festive banger and feeding people in need. And I’ll link to them on the show’s website as well, where you can also find every episode of the Allusionist, and transcripts of those, an additional material about each topic, and links to the show on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words. That’s all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
