It’s also a very dodgy time indeed musically. While being expected to believe and accept all sorts of laughable and absurd theological fairy stories, people are also apparently required to suspend any judgement or taste they may have about what their ears are telling them about the world around them and the sounds its inhabitants ought to be capable of making.

By way of wishing you, my discerning friend, a happy Yule-tide, I humbly offer the following tunes as an antidote to the festive-musical lobotomy to which I know you shall refuse to succumb.

River, by Joni Mitchell. This just manages to be a Christmas song while also looking back somewhat dolefully on a lost love and the need of escape. The song contains an occasional and very subtle refrain of the tune from Jingle Bells.

Anyway, the next seriously badass, Yule-tide ditty is John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over), which was and still is simple, true and utterly and brilliantly subversive. This song is an easy target for the festive-lobotomy gang, which proves its worth even more, if that were necessary. All those monotheistic superstitions must have been kicking themselves when their silly-hat brigade—their various popes, chief rabbis, ayatollas, Ronald Macdonalds and what-have-you—finally heard this lyric and realised its moral righteousness, its simplicity, and the error of their ways in prosecuting and/or sponsoring conflict to bolster their own interests.

Third is the pure, festive genius of Fairytale of New York by the Pogues (with the late, great Kirsty MacColl). The wonderful lyric depicts a scene from, in the words of Jeffrey Bernard, an “aim-low-and-miss” life that surely makes us all so very grateful for our own, no-doubt idyllic Yule-tide celebrations and the companions with whom we choose to spend them.

Happy <insert preference here> and very best wishes to you for 2010. I’ll see you then.

Cheers -

D.