As soon as the sun rose on November 1st — All Saints Day — the Christmas music began. All of it, including the two monumentally maddening hammer-stroke repetitive songs “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “The Little Drummer Boy”. My first thought for a remedy — a bullet to the brain to everyone who plays either song in public (everyone is welcome to play them behind closed doors, with effective acoustic insulation in place, of course; I am not an uncivilized monster) — turns out to be not only illegal, but also immoral; no matter what the provocation, aesthetic violence, especially of the fatal variety, apparently offends the sensibilities of our society.
So I propose a different remedy: removing miscreants from the public sphere, cordoning them off where their songs can no longer disrupt people of good will, while meting out a punishment that truly fits the crime. Not aesthetic execution, but aesthetic imprisonment:
A Mick Stevens cartoon, from the 8/17/81 issue of the New Yorker
The three pieces of music. The two Christmas songs and then, omigod, the Pachelbel [here the professor leaps from the room, shrieking not the rats!].
— from Wikipedia:
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an English Christmas carol and nursery rhyme. A classic example of a cumulative song, the lyrics detail a series of increasingly numerous gifts given to the speaker by their “true love” on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day). … A large number of different melodies have been associated with the song, of which the best known is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin.
— from Wikipedia:
“The Little Drummer Boy” (originally known as “Carol of the Drum”) is a popular Christmas song written by American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. First recorded in 1951 by the Austrian Trapp Family, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale; the Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years, and the song has been recorded many times since.
— from Wikipedia:
Pachelbel’s Canon (also known as Canon in D, P 37) is an accompanied canon by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706). The canon was originally scored for three violins and basso continuo and paired with a gigue, known as Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo. Both movements are in the key of D major. The piece is constructed as a true canon at the unison in three parts, with a fourth part as a ground bass throughout. Neither the date nor the circumstances of its composition are known
The canon (without the gigue) became a tremendous popular music success in the late 1960s, to the point where its endlessly steady repetition now seems to appear everywhere, including in elevators, supermarkets, shopping malls, tv ads, and cocktail lounges (as well as in concert halls). A fitting torture for musical malefactors.
(I forbear, of course, from reproducing any of this music here. I am not an evil person.)
November 26, 2025 at 2:17 pm |
Although it was apparently used in the soundtrack of a few movies and a couple TV episodes starting in 1974, I first became aware of the Pachelbel canon — and I believe this is the start of its wide popularity — in Robert Redford’s 1980 movie Ordinary People, in which this was the music performed by the high school choir that Elizabeth McGovern sang in.
November 26, 2025 at 2:37 pm |
The Wikipedia entry tells a tale of a variety of popular uses going back to the late 1960s. By the time of Stevens’s 1981 cartoon, it was clearly a cliché. It was a joke in my household in the 1970s (“No, no, not Pachelbel!”).