5 Christmas Songs Whose Lyrics Reveal Hidden Meanings
Do you ever listen to the words of Christmas songs?
Oh, you hear Christmas songs. But do you hear what I hear? Do you really listen to the lyrics and notice what they’re saying? Because if you do, you’ll notice they say some things very different from what everyone thinks they do.
Rudolph Never Actually Pulls Santa’s Sleigh
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Forget, for the moment, the famous stop-motion TV special. Forget also every illustration you’ve ever seen of Rudolph. And in the unlikely event that you know the original 1939 poem that created the character, forget that as well. Today, we’re going to talk exclusively about the song.
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” say the opening lines, “had a very shiny nose.” And that right there should change everything you thought you knew about Rudolph. We think Rudolph’s nose radiates light, projecting a beam strong enough to cut through fog. The song never says this. It says his nose is shiny, a word for stuff that merely reflects light. If the nose is shiny, it’s not the flashlight-nose we’re picturing. Light sources shine, but they aren’t shiny.
In the next lines, we hear his nose glows. While that similarly would be an inappropriate understatement if the nose were really so luminous as everyone thinks, it’s a step up from “shiny.” But look more closely, and you’ll see they don’t actually tell us it glows. They tell us:
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows
Rather than telling us it glows, they devote a great many precious syllables — two lines, in a song just 16 lines long — to telling us, instead, we would say it glows, if we ever saw it. They’re telling us it would be an exaggeration to say it glows (they already explained the nose is merely very shiny), but you’d even go so far as to describe it that way if you saw it. That’s how shiny it is.
The cookies won’t kill you. The phrasing marks that claim as hyperbole.
Next come the lines about the other reindeer insulting and shunning Rudolph, after which we get the big climax:
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say,
“Rudolph, with your nose so bright,
Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”
And how does this sleigh ride go? The song never says. It jumps to the other reindeer’s reactions and never tells us about Rudolph taking on the job. It devotes one of the four remaining lines to just repeating Rudolph’s full name again, and I already mentioned how much space they spent talking about the glow exaggeration. But they don’t give us one line to say, “Rudolph flew ’round the planet” or “Rudolph is Santa’s guide now” or “That’s how that deer saved Christmas.”
Now is when you realize Santa wasn’t seriously drafting Rudolph. He was ridiculing Rudolph, in the same way all of the other reindeer were. “Rudolph, your nose is so bright, you could probably light the way right through this fog!” he said. But he never actually hitched Rudolph to the sleigh, and the song never says he did. Of course he didn’t, because as we’ve established, Rudolph’s nose can’t really illuminate anything. Santa’s just jokingly saying it can, to tease him.
Anyway, Santa has always been able to navigate the entire world, using elf magic. He wouldn’t suddenly need a new tool to deal with the hitherto unknown phenomenon of fog, no more than Superman would — the legends don’t detail exactly how either navigates, but we see that both can with ease. Santa isn’t limited by his field of vision (if he were, he’d be screwed, with or without one extra headlight). That means his offer to Rudolph was only a jest.
The reindeer love Rudolph afterward, not because he pulls Santa’s sleigh but because the boss joined in with their teasing, and they find that hilarious. “You’ll go down in history,” they say, because of how funny this all is. They don’t say this with admiration or penitence. They shout it with glee.
Still, the setup and payoff imply that they do let him join in their reindeer games in the end. Every circle of friends needs one member who’s the butt of everyone’s jokes. This version of the story might be more inspirational than the one we all know. In real life, your own trademark oddity probably won’t turn out to be a superpower. So, it’s nice to think that everyone can just laugh about it together and love you anyway.
The ‘Deck the Halls’ Singers Are Deeply Drunk
Some people who want to keep Christmas holy actually don’t like the greeting “Merry Christmas.” They prefer “Happy Christmas.” They don’t like the word “jolly” very much, either. Both words refer to a boisterous sort of partying that they say ill suits a religious holiday.
The carol “Deck the Halls” talks of being both jolly and merry. In fact, the whole song is about drinking. If you haven’t noticed that, that must be because you’ve been hearing the bowdlerized version.
One of the most famous lines in the song is, “Don we now our gay apparel.” We all giggled at this as kids, not only because someone would fashion it into a gay joke but because the awkward construction made us think there was something off about it. We were right. That line was added in a version of the song written for schools in 1877. In the original version of the song, written the previous decade, the line is, “Fill the meadcup, drain the barrel.” This song is about drinking — drinking a lot.
You might know that the second verse begins with, “See the blazing yule before us.” That’s another edit. The original line is, “See the flowing bowl before us.” The bowl in question is another drinking vessel. The final line of this verse is commonly sung as, “While I tell of Christmas treasure.” Or: “While I tell of yuletide treasure.” Originally, the line was, “While I sing of beauty’s treasure.” The singers are drunk, and they’re horny as well.
One more line was changed. The second-to-last line, as commonly sung today, is, “Sing we joyous all together.” Originally, it was, “Laughing, quaffing all together.” Truly, the singers are drinking all the way through. This explains why, half the time, they can’t even remember what to say and just go with, “Fa-la la-la-la la-la, la, la!”
The Little Drummer Boy Is an Idiot
Along with fa-la la-la-la la-la, la, la, the other maddening Christmas carol refrain is pa rum-pum pum pum from “The Little Drummer Boy.” It’s that song about the boy who is unexpectedly invited by the Magi to join them on their trip to witness the birth of Jesus. Only once they’re at the stable does the boy realize that while the three of them carry fancy gifts, he’s too poor to have bought anything himself. So, maybe he could just play his drum for them instead?
But of course he can play his drum. Why else does he think the three men asked him to come along? He’s the little drummer boy. He’s carrying a giant drum. Obviously, they picked him for his drum. Drums are great for every occasion. Even the ox and lamb understand this.
The song wants us thinking that this boy is humble for not knowing his talent’s value beforehand. But the assumption that he was recruited to witness a king’s birth for any reason other than his drum is colossal arrogance.
The ‘Let It Snow’ Guy Can’t Keep His Story Straight
Now for that fun song about how there’s a blizzard outside, so let’s stay in and canoodle. No, not “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” I mean that other song fun song about how there’s a blizzard outside, so let’s stay in and canoodle: “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
It all goes well enough for a while, but then the singer hits us with this:
When we finally kiss goodnight
How I’ll hate going out in the storm
But if you really hold me tight
All the way home I’ll be warm
Why is he suddenly talking about leaving at the end of all this? I thought there was no place either of them have to go. That’s what he said earlier, anyway.
Until to this point, this was a perfectly nice song about two people who use the snow as an excuse to stay in and have sex. But now, the guy has to ruin it putting his foot down and saying he’s not staying over afterward.
Santa Is Actually NOT Creepy in ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’
You’ve heard many twisted takes on Santa that reimagine him as a predator or crazed killer. Many get inspiration from the song “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” which caution, “You better watch out,” and, “He sees you when you’re sleeping.” It’s time to address those interpretations and explain what those lines really mean. Because while I’ll never fault someone for reading too deeply into a song, with these lines, the people who interpret them darkly aren’t reading deeply enough.
“He sees you when you’re sleeping” sounds creepy to adult listeners because we associate that sort of spying with voyeurs. But the only reason voyeurs choose nighttime to peek at you is because when you’re asleep, you’re unable to detect them. They’d rather look at you during your waking hours, when you do various more interesting activities, but that’s harder because you’d catch them. Santa, who doesn’t enter your room every night but simply sees you via elf magic, could observe you at any time if he wanted, but he sticks to when you’re sleeping.
There are other reasons you find it creepy for people to see you when you sleep. “When I’m sleeping?” you might say. “That’s when I’m naked! Quite possibly next to some else, since we just had sex.” But that doesn’t apply to children. Sleep is the least interesting time to watch children, even for a predator. When Santa sees kids who are sleeping, it’s because he’s watching over them.
He sees you when you’re sleeping — and he sees you only when you’re sleeping. The song pointedly says that Santa knows when you’re awake but not that he sees you when you’re awake. Santa thus should come off as far less creepy than God, less creepy than your dead grandfather and less creepy than any other mystical figure parents tell you is keeping an eye on you.
Many a child, on first hearing about God’s omniscience, wonders, “God is watching me always? Even when I poop?” But Santa respects your privacy. He knows if you’ve been bad or good (again: elf magic), but he doesn’t see you be bad or good. He’s not spying on your actions.
The lines “you better watch out, you better not cry” do sound sinister, and those would be a dark way to start any song, no matter the context. That’s why “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” doesn’t start that way. The generic version you might hear in a store does, but that skips past the song’s actual opening verse:
I just came back from a lovely trip along the Milky Way
I stopped off at the North Pole to spend a holiday
I called on dear old Santa Claus to see what I could see
He took me to his workshop and told his plans to me. So —
The singer is a space traveler (no explanation provided, nor required). Santa is someone you can just drop in and visit, with the only obstacle being your means of transport. That’s much less scary than newer depictions, which say the North Pole is a secret base and Santa struggles to avoid ever being seen. The song also makes sure to call him “dear” because he is a familiar and beloved figure.
Now comes, “You better watch out” (we can call that part the chorus), and, “He sees you when you’re sleeping” (we can call that the bridge). Then there’s a second verse:
Now Santa is a busy man, he has no time to play
He’s got millions of stockings to fill on Christmas day
You’d better write your letter now and mail it right away
Because he’s getting ready his reindeer and his sleigh
Nothing too crazy there, but if you were thinking toys were just something Santa uses to lure you in: nope. Santa isn’t going to take out those toys and play with you. He never plays. He drops them off and moves on.
After that second verse comes a second chorus, about all those toys he’s going to leave you. And there’s a second bridge as well, again about toys and about how happy every girl and boy is going to be. The below video contains the whole thing. It only takes two minutes to sing it all (they pad the length here by singing it all twice), so it’s surprising so many versions of the song leave all these bits out.
Finally, the song ends by returning to the “You better watch out” chorus. And now that you do have all the context, it’s clear that this isn’t a warning but a reassurance. “You better watch out, you better not cry” doesn’t mean, “Beware, behave.” It means, “Heads up. Rejoice!” For Christmas is the day when the prophesied one arrives.
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