Ah now, one of my earliest Christmas memories is of singing this at an infant school concert back in the early seventies. Or rather listening to the oldest class sing it while I sat on the floor dressed as a Red Indian. I couldn't follow all the words, but it didn't matter - I got 'stocking', 'reindeer', toys' and 'Santa's so that was plenty to get any six year old's Christmas spirit flowing. And I couldn't follow the lyrics too well partly because our school's version was taken at a fair clip so it comes as something as a shock to hear Valentine reduce it to a croon and a drawl that sounds as festive as Scrooge before the ghosts popped round. And by taking it so precisely, Valentine's delivery lets the not quite good enough rhymes take more prominence than they should ("S is for old Santa who makes every kid his pet" indeed!) and it replaces the would be jollity with something more dour as bored old Dickie waits for old Santa to bring him his pay check. Surprising then that it's not been more covered by artists intent on writing these wrongs because, as my infant school demonstrated, there's a lot of fun to be had here if you do it properly.
No comments:
Post a Comment