The Annual Christmas Music Confessional

It’s time.

The Annual Fordeville Christmas Music Confessional is open.

Forget your shopping lists, your relatives driving you batshit crazy, the overachieving Pinterest Christmas boards and moving that damn Elf on the Shelf again.  Because it’s time to come clean about your dirty secret — the cheesiest Christmas songs that you love, that you sing at full volume when nobody’s looking — but would never admit to elsewhere.

So, I bring you a public service with this confessional.   I’m owning up to all my holiday favorites, as I have done for the past few years — shamelessly — and now you have a place where you can do the same. And we’ll never speak of it outside this blog.

Come all ye cheesy and tell us what you’re singing when nobody is around.

• I’ll start out safe and lead with John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over).” The song isn’t cheesy, but the sight of me — inhaling a hot chocolate and weeping when those kids start singing the chorus — might be.  This song kills me. Gorgeous and sad and sweet.

• “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” As a child of the 80s, I won’t even bother apologizing for loving this song. It’s my birthright. I remember my sister getting the 45 single (gulp), and we played it over and over. And the video — Sweet Jesus. I. Loved. It. My friend Jen and I made it our full-time job in sixth grade to know which artist was singing which part, amidst our intense Simon LeBon vs. Bono debates. I just looked online at the full Band Aid roster of singers and I think I feel my leg warmers falling down. Kool and the Gang? Really?

• Apparently nobody ever fucking comes home for Christmas and there are all kinds of ways to sing and cry about it. And so I give you “Baby Please Come Home for Christmas” {The Eagles, Aaron Neville and Bon Jovi versions} and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) {the incomparable Darlene Love, of course — but the U2 version is also great}.

• Let’s just veer further into total holiday depressive mode while we’re at it with Joni Mitchell’s “River.” Doesn’t it just make you want to jump out of a window in utter despair? Not just me, right? And — cheesy alert:  There is a little-known remake that is sung by, of all people, Robert Downey, Jr.  Who knew?  Apparently, he did this on one of his Ally McBeal guest appearances {remember that train wreck of a show?}. Turns out, the man can sing.  Say what you will.  Oh, and pass me the tissues.

OK. I’m saving my truly cheesy favorites for last.

• I honestly can’t even talk to you if you can’t get behind Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne.”   No, I’m not joking. “Met my old lover in the grocery store — The snow was falling Christmas Eve…” Yes, that one. Fucking kills me.  You might be a little dead inside if it doesn’t get to you.

And, some big favorites to tie this up. Strangely, both of these last two songs have the same title but are entirely different. So, under the category of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”…

• This one is a Fordeville family favorite but not terribly well-known, unless you are one of the five global members of the Vince Vance & the Valiants Fan Club. I have no idea what else they sing — I think they are a country outfit — but what a great song, released in 1989. The video has a medium-to-high bizarro/creepy factor (What the fuck is actually happening with the weird dude? There is no way in hell that’s all she wants for Christmas). But the music has got a twangy, sort of retro feel. And it’s completely cheesy. Bring it!

• Lastly, yes, I’ll say it. I love the Mariah Carey song. I know, it’s cheesy. But I’m owning it. I’m not typically a Mariah fan but there is something about this song. It reminds me of the old Phil Spector Wall of Sound and the girl bands of the 1960s. Plus, it conjures up that scene from Love Actually, and then I think about Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, and everything is right in the world.

So there you go — those are some of my holiday favorites, in no particular order. Honorable mention to The Ramones’ “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” and The Beach Boys’ “Merry Christmas Baby.”

Confession complete.

But you guys are not going to leave me hanging out here all alone, are you?  Let’s hear the best of your worst.  It’s OK — I promise to keep it between us and the Internet.