It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!

marathonpacks:

nickminichino:

Don’t get me wrong, I love taking potshots at Baby Boomers, but come on. Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. 

As a friend of mine pointed out to me when I posted this photo on Facebook, this trend is as much a reflection of the sort of canon-creation that was fueled by the simultaneous rise of commercial radio and television than a boomer scheme to keep their childhoods alive (though that’s still a part of it, of course, as the absence of ”Christmas in Hollis” from yearly celebrations proves). But yes, in the same way that singing “Happy Birthday” doesn’t nostalgically transport us back to the turn of the 20th century, singing about “Rudolph” doesn’t mean we’re recollecting the days of war bonds. Me, I think of this when I think of “Little Drummer Boy.” It’s the fallacy, as Nick points out above, of assuming that a song’s era of release tags it with a specific cultural relevance for infinity.

It’s also the thing that happens when tech geeks try to write about music, but that’s more Maura’s realm.

MORE: As a (commercial) tradition, Christmas itself exerts a particular influence on cultural expression (differently for different groups of course). One of the paradoxes, I think, is that Christmas is both the most nostalgic holiday—which means that there are ironclad cultural canons created—and the one most indebted to the creation of temporary commodity markets and inflated value for shiny new things. It’s a yearly ritual where we can see modern life’s complicated relationship to time and value on gaudy display.

Maybe I’ve come to expect to much from XKCD or the internet in general, but it bothers me that Randall didn’t cite his source for these statistics, mostly because I find it impossible to believe that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” isn’t on this list. (I’d also guess that Lennon/Ono’s “Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)” might rank, but that’s a guess. Mariah Carey’s song has been so ubiquitous since its release that I would bet lumps of money that it outranks “Blue Christmas,” “I Saw Mommy,” “Holly Jolly,” and probably “I’ll Be Home…”)

Or is Christmas music on the airwaves really different in other parts of the country? Mariah Carey doesn’t strike me as only (or even primarily) appealing to the East Coast Liberal Elite, but sometimes it’s hard to see outside one’s own box.