Christmas Thoughts

Christmas is supposed to be the most solemn and, well, holy day of the year.  But me, as a non-Christian, I kind of want to get out and do stuff.  Traffic isn't bad -- hadn't been all week, actually -- and I know that if this were any other Saturday night, downtown would be lousy with drunken people.  It can't be tonight, Christmas Eve/Day, so I would feel as though I would have the whole town of Minneapolis to myself.

Two years ago, with me home alone and wanting something to do, I quickly scoured bars that were open Christmas Eve Night.  I have no idea if bars close then.  I have no idea if all bars are open then.  But after Googling something to the effect of "Twin Cities bars open Christmas Eve Night," I went to Merlins Rest, which is known for its huge book and supply of whiskey.  They seem to traditionally be open regular hours for Christmas Eve, so even though there may be others, I know of one place that will always serve as a refuge for non-observant scoundrels like me.  Their whisky is stiff and expensive, and when I went there the only food they were serving were these bags of chips.  Also, a lot of scoundrels were there, none of them I really wanted to talk to.  But for enjoying and contemplating your existence on The Holiest Night/Day In The Western World, I wouldn't mind going there again and again.

And I would have gone there tonight (after all, the temperature's above normal and the freezing rain won't set in until the morning) if my parents were away.  But, golly, they're still here!  They haven't gone on a cruise or went to Las Vegas or anything; through the admittedly above average winter weather and cloudy days, my parents are sticking around Minnesota.

They say that they need to stick around because they have the decision to sell off their properties here.  The lawsuit that was brought against them hurt them a lot, and once the next one was filed against them, they were looking at all the red tape they say the city is making them run through and they had enough.  It's a slow process; they have almost a dozen properties, and their thinking is that they need to prepare each empty property to sell, so this isn't something that can be done immediately.  They've already started it, but they're in the thick of it now, so that's why they're still here.

However, I wonder if there's an ulterior motive.  When my folks were in Vegas last Christmas season, my brother and sister (and their spouses) visited them.  I didn't.  So I wonder if they chose to stick around here to be around me this holiday season.  I don't get that vibe, but still, I wonder.

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Embedding a Christmas song has become a sort-of tradition here on Wailing And Failing.  This season I have been listening to a lot of holiday music, especially SiriusXM Pops and on The Current.  Therefore there are many songs I want to list.

In the end, however, I think I am going to pull the trigger on Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You."  I recently read this marketing acronym that shortens a well-confirmed conceit that people want things that push the envelope and yet feel familiar to them -- MAYA, or Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.  The industrial designer who coined this term, Raymond Loewy, basically boiled down the art of selling anything to anyone.

I don't want to say that Carey was thinking along those cold and clinical terms when she created that song in 1994.  But you can't help but apply that MAYA principle here.  I defy you to find any snippet in that song that is a blatant plagiarism of another Christmas song.  Yet the familiar tropes of the Christmas song, from the sleigh bells to, especially, the Motown feel of it, are impossible to ignore.  Therefore, "All I Want For Christmas Is You" has the best of both worlds: Reimagining a tried-and-true Christmas story about just being with the ones you love for modern (well, relatively modern times -- it's been 22 years since she released it) times.

But the biggest reason it remains popular is because it's a darn good song.  Credit this MAYA thing or not, it's just ... good.  In fact, it might be Carey's biggest-selling song in her oeuvre.  After all, it's a Christmas song that gets played every season; people can mint money off of that, and Carey has managed to write and produce a song (along with a person by the name of Walter Afanasieff) that not only still gets played every year, but may be gaining in popularity; yesterday, Spotify said that the song was the most streamed Christmas song in Australia, the first time it's hit #1 in any chart there, I guess.

I really wonder how much money Carey makes in royalties from her song every year.  She could probably live off the money from that alone.  And she deserves to.  "All I Want For Christmas Is You" should now be considered a Christmas classic.

Merry Christmas, everyone.