Twisted Christmas Carols

The parodies, and other great and funny Christmas songs

Dec 23, 2024

red and gold christmas baubles — Photo by little plant on Unsplash

I will fully admit that I’m not really a fan of Christmas music. When I walked into a store the week before Halloween this year and heard a Christmas tune, I absolutely dropped an “F” bomb that wasn’t silent.

AFTER THANKSGIVING PEOPLE!! I can tolerate it, if I have to, after Thanksgiving. The weekend after Thanksgiving, I would tune the car radio until I found the Christmas music station and leave it for the kids when they were little. (I absolutely switched the station when I was driving by myself.) Now that they are taking turns picking their own music in the car on the way to school, only one has chosen a holiday tune once.

Fun tidbit: there is a local brewery (Radicle Effect Brewerks) that will kick you out if you play a Christmas song on their TouchTunes. And that makes me love them even more. They do have the best Bloody Marys in town as well.

I don’t mean to hate Christmas music. I loved it as a kid - anxious about Christmas. We used to have an album with the Alvin & the Chipmunks Christmas song, which was absolutely a favorite in our household. I believe it also had the songs “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” and “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”

I loved the funny Christmas songs. As a teenager, I remember my favorite Christmas song became Bob & Doug McKenzie’s version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Then who can forget the first time they heard “Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer.” This song actually has some great local history: in 1985, a DJ from a local radio station (WLLR in Davenport, IA) played the song 27 times in a row and got fired.

Some of my favorite memories of putting up my own Christmas tree with my children were when we would listen to the local radio station in northern Wisconsin (from about 2006-2012). WOJB. It was the tribal radio station from the local reservation. Every year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving (maybe it was Friday?) they would spend a couple of hours playing the funniest Christmas songs and parodies. I can’t remember what the show was called, but it became our annual tradition to listen while we got out the Christmas tree and decorated it. I spent quite a while digging through their website and archives to try to find out what the show was called and whether they still do it. I would have also loved to find an old playlist, but wasn’t able to find anything.

Searching through tons of lists online, I found some of the songs I know were played during that show every year! So, I made a playlist! I also included some newer stuff that I think is pretty great. I left off some of the older funny songs that are super overplayed and on every list… But - enjoy!! This is the kind of Christmas music I can get behind!