1. Santa Clause Is Coming To Town -  Bruce Springsteen Version

2. Grandma Got Run Over By The Reindeer

3. Jingle Bells

4. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting) – multiple versions including the John Denver / Muppets Version.

5. White Christmas – Bing Crosby

Did you figure it out?

Answer: They all have the Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells! motif in them.

Did I miss any?

Christmas trees are a unique product in that it is a compliment to hear that your artificial tree looks like a natural tree, and it is a compliment to hear that your natural tree looks like an artificial tree.

So yesterday I was listening to a very serious commentary piece on NPR about the sad practice of extreme hazing which exists in the community of very high quality marching bands in the US. Apparently, new members are regularly and sometime brutally physically beaten as a part of being accepted into the band.

And despite the seriousness and sad nature of the story, I found myself laughing out loud after a three words sentence in the article.

The author was telling about how, in an interview with a band member, he had heard of “how she’d been attacked, time and time again, by the older flutists.”

And then the commentator said*, “That’s right. Even flute players.”

And as I was listening, unfortunately due to my odd sensibilities, all of the indignance and horror that I had been feeling flew away. Because after hearing that sentence, I was was expecting the commentator to continue:

“I mean, flute players are usually dainty, right? They dress in flowing gowns and don’t so much march as flow when they are out on the field, even when the band is playing a cover of a disco song. If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I would have thought that a stern look in the eye was as violent as a floutest could ever get. But this is how far these bands have fallen. Even the high woodwinds have been corrupted.”

But no, he went on to describe more of the psychological damages created by this practice.

Meanwhile, I continued chuckling. So . . . shameful, right?

* I know that in the transcript, it says “Yes. Even Flute players”. But if you listen to the audio, he clearly says “That’s right”.

These nine songs have three things in common. What are the commonalities?

Two of the three are fairly obvious, the third is not so much

1. “O Come O Come Emanuel”
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emanuel shall come thee, O Israel

2. “Christmastime” (From the Charlie Brown Christmas)
Christmas time is here,
happiness and cheer,
fun for all
that children call
their favorite time of year.

3. “My Favorite Things”
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things.

4. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.

5. “What Child is this?”
Joy, joy for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

6. “How Great Our Joy”
How great our joy (great our joy) Joy, joy, joy (joy, joy, joy)

7. “Carol of the bells”
Christmas is here,
bringing good cheer,
to young and old,
meek and the bold,

8. Pat-a-Pan

God and man today become
More in tune than fife and drum,
So be merry while you play!

9. Fum, Fum, Fum

On this joyful Christmas Day
Sing fum, fum, fum

Did you figure it out?

Here are the traits these nine songs have in common:

1. All of them are songs you might hear at Christmastime.

2. All of them have lyrics dealing with Joy, Wonder and Happiness.

Those are the more readily apparent commonalities. Here is the one less noticeable, and more ironic.

3. All* of them are in a minor key.

Did I miss any that should be in the list?

In any case, never let it be said that a minor song is never happy. Especially in the month of December.

* Okay, if you want to be picky, “Christmastime” is at least non-major.

In any case, to prevent this sort of thing from happening, I keep a document in my dresser and every day I write down some quick code for what I’m wearing (for example – “bl str sh” might mean “Blue striped short sleeve shirt”) and then I look up earlier in the list to see when I last wore that shirt, make sure it’s more than two weeks ago and cross out that instance.

Want proof? I just finished this page and have started another.

I’ll just note that the top left portion includes items from last Christmas.

So I’m curious – what do you do to make sure the horrible over-wearing of your favorite shirt doesn’t occur?

I don’t think I’ve publicly admitted it on this blog, but I’m a bit of a Star Trek fan. I’ve watched almost every episode of at least four of the shows and I’ve been to exactly one convention. Does that qualify me?

So recently my wife and I watched The Captains, (it’s instant viewing on Netflix) a documentary produced by William Shatner in which he interviewed all of the other Star Trek captains.

It was actually quite interesting.

The most intriguing part was a section in which he asked all of them about the personal cost of being cast in the role. In it we learned that four of the actors who played the Captains were divorced, two of the divorces were at least indirect results of being actors on science fiction television and one (Kate Mulgrew) said that her kids resented her role in Star Trek and were ‘dripping contempt’ for the show.

And then (at 58:55) Mr. Shatner asks Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine – Benjamin Sisko) about his family life during the show and what follows is two minutes of . . . well, I would call it glorious incoherence.

How would you describe it? I’ve taken the time to transcribe it – here it is:

====

Shatner: Did you lose family time?
Brooks: Of course!
Shatner: Did it hurt?
Brooks: Of course!
Shatner: But how much harm was suffered -

Brooks: Well, you’d have to ask them, I mean, because the attendant, the attendant of – of the movement of time, y’know for us all, y’know, there-there it is, there – the one – the one hand or the other. I mean who knows, therefore, y’know, in retrospect, y’know. I mean, you can do it that way: say I should have done this as opposed, y’know, I mean, who knows? I mean so – so – so I hold fast to what I’ve chosen to do and I’m not apologizing for that. But the attendant toll taken on family and all of that is, that’s – that’s it.

Shatner: What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? That’s profound. That was terrible.

Brooks: It’s true, baby.

Shatner: That was terrible.

Brooks: Well, it’s not terrible or not terrible, it’s true. It’s true.

Shatner: Well, it’s true, you suffered.

Brooks: It’s true, they suffered.

Shatner: You suffered.

Brooks: It’s true-

Shatner: But you suffered as well.

Brooks: Well, watch -

Shatner: Well, if they suffered, you suffered.

Brooks: Watch what I’m saying to you.

Shatner: I’m listening.

Brooks: It’s true. It’s not terrible or not. It’s true. You know, the toll – the toll on people, you can’t get it back. I mean, no matter what. I mean, whether-whether the decision to make, y’know, to do the thing or not to do a thing – you know what I’m talking about?

Shatner: Yes, I do. Did you discuss this with Vicki like this or did you -

Brooks: She knows, of course! I’ll move. Whether we survive is still accident, isn’t it? Whether we survive all of the sum of who we are -

Shatner: The cumulative effects of life.

Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve got to live it, baby. Like you. What’s different?

Shatner: The same.

Brooks: Hmmm.

========

Hmmm, indeed.

And for the record, Avery has been married to Vicki since 1976.

This might apply to other areas of your life, as well.

One competing studio actually worked on a similar concept, this one where a man went through his whole life looking like he was a balding man of sixty three. But studio execs quashed the project saying there was “no character change” and that the protagonist was “too static”.

In the end the original concept photography was sold an used as another on-line education grant advertisement:

I will say that as a young child I found some of the scenes to be quite scary and sobering and none were more frightening to me than the episode called “The Phoney-Booths” in which the evil Simon Bar Sinister created phone booths that would transform normal people into slaves (with odd siren-like lights on their heads) who would do whatever evil he wanted them to.

And when Underdog fell into the trap and became (temporarily!) evil himself, the seven year old me found it very disturbing.

All that to say that when I see this internet add on the yahoo website:

. . . it kind of freaks me out a little bit. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the marketers were going for.