Holiday Songs You Love... and Loathe

Enlarge this image

Harry Lillis 'Bing' Crosby in full Santa attire for the film version of 'White Christmas' in 1954. You LOVE him. Keystone/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Keystone/Getty Images

Harry Lillis 'Bing' Crosby in full Santa attire for the film version of 'White Christmas' in 1954. You LOVE him.

Keystone/Getty Images

All news is bad news. Or so the saying goes. Many Brits firmly believe this — and use it as a branch to beat their journalists, one of the more despised species in these isles.

Enlarge this image

The youngest member of the Fife & Drum Corps of Chester, Conn., doing a three-beat roll on a drum, circa 1955. You're divided about the song he represents. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Three Lions/Getty Images

The youngest member of the Fife & Drum Corps of Chester, Conn., doing a three-beat roll on a drum, circa 1955. You're divided about the song he represents.

Three Lions/Getty Images

It is, of course, untrue. There's no better example of the media's appetite for good news than the tsunami of euphoria with which they've greeted Andy Murray's Wimbledon triumph on Sunday.

The English are feting Murray as a British hero. They're calling for him to be made a knight of the realm to honor his prowess with racquet and ball, and his status as the first British champion in men's singles at Wimbledon in 77 years.

Murray's actually from Scotland. Many Scots view him not only as their hero — not England's — but as the greatest Scottish sports star since they all wore kilts, and horned ginger-haired highland cattle were freely roaming their hills.

Why does this matter?

Weeks of e-mail from listeners have produced an unofficial list of loved and hated holiday songs. And it turns out you're most passionate — and most divided — about one song in particular.

Because next year, Scots will vote on whether to stay in the United Kingdom. The possibility of Scottish secession is the subject of a fierce political contest between British Prime Minister David Cameron — who has vowed to fight tooth and nail to save the union — and Scotland's first minister, the nationalist Alex Salmond.

When Murray won, Salmond craftily whipped out a big Scottish flag and joyously brandished it behind Cameron's head in full view of the cameras — and violating Wimbledon's house rules. We can expect to see that image many times in coming months, as the fight for Scottish independence gathers momentum.

Here's a hint: "perumpapum pum."

Salmond was at Sunday's championship match, sitting in the Royal Box, behind his adversary, Cameron.

The opening lines of a front page story in Rupert Murdoch's usually hard-nosed Sunday Times, (published before Murray's victory) captured this trend: "Britain is basking in unaccustomed sunshine, sporting triumph and the best spirits for three years this weekend," it gushed.

Yep, "The Little Drummer Boy."

Britain's current appetite for Good News is not confined to sport. The cynicism and skulduggery of the British newspaper industry now comes hand-in-hand with a determination to peddle happiness.

The tabloids are already churning out stories about "Baby Cambridge," along with maps of the royal maternity clinic. There are accounts of Kate's Yummy Mummy Baby Group, and her penchant, during pregnancy, for vegetable curries and Haribu candies.

Haans Petruschke of Kirtland, Ohio, cringes at the song, which he calls "a made-up, implausable retelling of the nativity tale," adding "I also don't like the ox and lamb keeping time. Keeping time to what? Isn't keeping time what the drummer boy is doing?"

Those who find this happy-clappy stuff a little stomach-turning better toughen up. More, much more, is to come: A royal baby is due in a few days.

Jinny Mason of Whatley, Mass., remembers that her nephews Asa and Axel used to have a bedtime music tape — and around Christmas would burst into tears, begging "not perumpapum pum!"

The birth will be marked by a 41-gun salute in Hyde Park, popping champagne corks from the kingdom's royalists, a hurricane of unctuous guff from the nation's anchormen and women, and world-weary sighs from a dwindling band of Brits ... who're discovering they actually prefer bad news.

But Dorothy Burggraaf of Kansas City, Mo., is of two minds: "My most abhorred and adored holiday song is the 'Little Drummer Boy,'" she says. "I hate it because I think it's one of the most simplistic and shallow of the holiday songs, but as it happened this most abhorred became part of my most adored when I heard Bing Crosby and David Bowie in a duet."

Oh, yes. Der Bingle and Ziggy Stardust himself, together, forever, in that frozen moment from 1977, on one of Bing's holiday TV specials. YouTube, anyone?

And for Jackie Fleming of California, the song recalls one of the best times of her life.

"When my son Casey was in kindergarten each night during his bath he'd ask me to sing the song with him so he could remember the words when the class performed it for the Christmas pageant," she says. "And on the day when the night of the pageant came I searched the crowd for Casey but I couldn't find him. The the chorus started chanting... 'Broom... broommmm...' and as the curtain slowly parted Casey alone on the stage starting singing in a beautiful choir boy voice that I had never heard before. And it was one of the most surprising and delightful moments of my life. And now every year when I hear 'The Little Drummer Boy' I have my little boy back for a few moments."

There wasn't much controversy about "Christmas Time Is Here" and other music from Vince Guaraldi's dreamy, jazzy backdrop for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

From New York City, Laurie Blair writes: "I grew up in the 1960s and like many people of my age, looked forward to the annual broadcast of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' and as a result, will always look at the saddest Christmas tree on the lot with great affection."

"I like it because it has a nice dichotomy between the world weariness of the accompaniment, plus the hope and the wonder of the season expressed through the voices of the children that sing," says Nathan Lansing of Bismarck, N.D.

People wrote in with grudging affection for Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" and to plug Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song," but the jury is finally in on the "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" case, and the verdict is not good:

Mary Fitzgerald of Keswick, Va., describes herself as a young and fairly new grandmother.

"What point is there during this happy and uplifting season to a song that talks about an innocent person being trampled by an animal?" she asks.

Oh, yes. Animals. Please, you told us. No barking dogs. And definitely no Jingle Cats.

Lisa Newkirk of Land-o-Lakes, Fla., put that song to great use. She started getting calls from a telemarketer in November of last year. Every single day.

"And I knew approximately what time the telemarketers would call, so I cued up the sample and when the machine connected me to the real person I clicked on play," she says, offering the caller a dose of "Jingle Bells" by a group of meowing felines.

She says the calls stopped shortly there after.

Twins Emma and Becca Freeman of Minneapolis say their favorite song is Otis Redding's version of "White Christmas."

There are many versions of the Irving Berlin classic — more than 500 in dozens of languages, according to ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. But the most famous by far is the original by Bing Crosby.

The 1947 recording is the best-selling single of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, selling 50-million copies.

In the Seabrook family, it's on 78 rpm, 33 rpm, cassette tape, CD... and now on iPod.