Nora Yockey retros a ’90s girl beat with a pop ’60s feel for her “Christmas Cookies.” A bit underdone but still edible.
Vaporous True doubles down on the girl group sound with electronica harmony by way of “Christmas and Cookies Song.” There’s a sadness here that feels foreign. (Maybe that’s just angst about whether or not they’ll get a pony.)
Musicals need shorthand to describe an idea. Christmas cookies fill the bill as a little detail with a big tradition to unpack.
Henry Noodle is a small time musical franchise by Tim McCanna. He’s pursued musical theater through the Cosmic Calamities of his SciFi hero. One such adventure saw our hero teaching silly girl aliens in skimpy costumes about Christmas. “Christmas Cookies” takes a minute to start, but becomes crispy and crunchy in its own special echelon.
Tina deVaron spreads her own show stopping message (and jazz hands) with “When is a Cookie?” Trust me, it’s a holiday song. And it’s got close up mugging, sashaying, and the drama of a torn family. Oh, and a recipe.
The Fairy Tale Pops is the 21st century version of sweatshop kids’ music. They crank out albums into dollar bins based on fairy tales Disney made movies out of but don’t own the Grimms’ copyrights to.
I don’t mean to malign their talent, verve, or business acumen (although their fan site has “0 fans” as of this writing). I think this flashy, percussive, bubblegum is just as good for children as Mozart in the womb. It has a formative place in human development.
I say all this because they have a complete album devoted to a particular Christmas cookie: The Gingerbread Man’s Christmas.
Featured tunes include the swinging pop “Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Man” set to ‘Silent Night,’ a sassy ersatz-rock “The Chase,” and sweet harmony country style “Sweet and Tasty Pastry.” Set to ‘Up on the Housetop’ “The Great Christmas Eve Cookie Calamity” sets the whole story up, however, with vertiginous rhythms and electronic orchestrations out of science fiction.
Not that cookies are more kid-friendly than candy canes, but the pedantic Christmas chants for little brains add too much sugar and not enough spice. So here are our nominees for most over-enunciated, staccato syncopated, simply loud songs about cookies for Christmas.
Spelling the word cookies (with a mean Spanish guitar) Allie Jo Thomas folk-teaches the rug rats with “Christmas Cookies.” Short and sweet.
Kids like recipes and following rules, so mix that up with an Island beat as Maple Leaf Learning suggests “Let’s Make Cookies for Santa Claus.” Okay.
Slinging an agenda to the ankle-biters Cherry, the Resurrection Rabbit (unironically) sings “Christmas Cookies” in an undecipherable falsetto about cookies, Christ, and Easter. Huh?
More funny speech impediments from Patrick Roberage Productions, Inc. swinging the kids with the whiny complaints of crappy cookie making in “Christmas Cookie Jam.” Slap that grandma.
Playing the Goofy card Brent Holmes sings “The Christmoose Cookie Song” like a moose, though not a religious one. Moose are stupid and make kids laugh at them, in case you weren’t sure.
Silly hillbilly music makes kids kid like, i guess. Crime and dogs, banjos and harmonicas, John R Erickson romps and rollocks through “Christmas Cookies.” And if you learn about the history of American music in the mix, well fine.
Nothing like a military march to rouse the tots into cookie singing formations! This one seems like Plank Road Publishing (a hothouse of school assembly song production), but i don’t have a source. “Christmas Cookies” here features a fast and a slow side with a point counter point round for the finale. All i really hear are exhausted first grade teachers.
Perhaps a psychedelic sidebar? Todd McHatton uses cookies as a potent symbol for childish mythology. Yeah, that’s about right.
What kid songs can do is cough up a big production show tune like the renaissance of Disney musicals did back in the ’90s. Veggie Tales wants kids proselytized to Christianity with singing produce and a dash of wit, a dollop of talent, and I must say some delirium. “Oh Santa” features an anxious boy cucumber with a plate of Christmas cookies, three wisemen (asparagus burglar, pea viking with an odd trace of Hebrew, squash IRS auditor), cheap sets, samaritan examples, slapstick, and a bellicose tomato Santa. Take a peek:
The hoary tradition of the plateful of cookies by the chimney is only enhanced by everyone eating the special made spritz and platzchen hand over hand until the holidays are past. Oh, whew, let me catch my breath.
The monster novelty (read mainstream) Christmas songs here are:
“Christmas Cookies” by George Strait and everyone else in the entire country music hemisphere who wants an aw shucks gee whiz addition to their yule oeuvre. It’s cute. All those other covers basically ape George. The only variations i like for their variety are the R W Hampton (and kids) batch for adding just a pinch of honky tonk, and the Hadley Holloway and Gregory Fisher half-dozen for their swing/early rock joy.
“‘Til Santa’s Gone (Milk & Cookies)” by Clint Black. This one doesn’t have the legs of the the 1990s Strait classic, but it gets down home and five-years-old and tells a story. It twerks country music the wrong way, overusing the choochoo harmonica, formatted after the musical show-stopper, but gee-golly does it bake for me.
And now the least worst of the fruitcake songs. The nut-laden finale–until we move on to the most popular baked Christmas sweet of them all.
Rum cake gets boxed in here, best portrayed in riddim by The Barefoot Man’s “Rum Cake.” Hic! Nearly is impressive is rumcakes.org’s “Rum Cakes.” Hypnotetically repetitive. And folky. Also mercantiley Lisa of Lisa’s Rum Cakes sings “Lisa’s Rum Cake Song” as a commercial for her seasonal product. Okay.
Back to our featured baked good.
12Stone Worship offers up Xian young men of the hiphop persuasion to praise the Christmastide, while side slamming our target with “Spread Love, Not the Fruitcake.” Fresh (yeah, without the exclamation point, tha’s wha-yime-sighin’). Big mixedmedia finish, though.
I’ve already squiched in Lauren Mayer’s “The Fruitcake That Ate New Jersey.” That was more than a year ago, so another song-story-time for this overbaked orchestration.
Finally a song parody about fruitcake! Master comic-caroler Dave Rudolf growls out “Fruitcakes for Christmas,” to ‘Silver Bells’ elvis style. Okay, mostly fun.
Pretty as twinkling lights is 1000 Clowns mellowly rapping “I Hate Fruitcake” available from all i can tell only on the KROQ Christmas fund-raiser. I don’t begrudge the boys hate when they sing like angels who were high.
The sticky crumbs here… angry, mean songs about fruitcake with some redeeming graces.
Some old schoolhouse rock ripoff about fruitcake rounded the web a while back and at least one troller posted half of this nice calypso number (without any laffs in it) as “The Fruit Cake Song.” It had possibility….
Another “Fruitcake Song” of uncertain origin backs prepubescent pajama wearing ballerina-wannabes in some outdoor park festival. It kinds pops, what you can hear of it.
The Wissman Family and The Von Trapp Children (grandkids of the original Austrian Kurt) kid around with “Please Don’t Send Me Fruitcake.” Oldsters sneer at the sentiment but approve of the youthful exuberance. Adorable!
Local holiday revue with neighbor talent only embellishes “Holiday Lament (Nobody Likes a Fruitcake)” from That Time of Year. This time it’s from the point of view of the maligned mealy loaf, at least that side of the table. Great harmonies, girls!
One repetitive gag for the good ol’ fruitcake song is the receptive concept of regifting this puppy. Spoiler alert: you give it away forever! You might get it back! It’s in the postal system for eternity! Heangh-hrrou!
Plank Road Publishing has an entry here.”Everlasting Fruitcake” is a bit more fast paced than their usual careful constipation for dumb little kids. I could dance to this one.
Pat Boone is so old by now we can’t tell if he’s phoning it in, or if he’s being puppeteered by greedy descendants when he sings (makes up) “The Fruitcake.” Give the geezer credit, with this ratatat listing of everyone who regifts, he’s going for stroke.
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir whoop it up with “Recycle the Fruitcake.” The pageant is the thing wherein we’ll lampoon every queer stereotype with a winkity-wink in-on-it we can flounce it and you’ll never really get it costume excess-roy. Hoo boy.
Duck Logic Comedy overplays the joke with “The Fruitcake (I Hate Fruitcake).” And it takes half the song to get to the revolving part of the joke. But more musical talent than humor wins out here.
Like lines at Disneyland, mothers-in-law, and foul-mouthed children, fruitcake is the lazy man’s joke–presuming, assuming, and subsuming a cultural unspoken menace that is spoken. Some of these jokesongs are wastes of time.
But what else are we gonna do?
“The Fruitcake Song” has been passed around to churches and artists of some talent, but Kirk Talley hits the nail on the head with his wokka-wokka zip-zing smirking hamminess. It’s funny to somebody that sneaking this gift to the dog ‘would be a sin.’ I guess. Yawn.
Bill Engvall must have whiplash from patting himself on the back so hard for his “Fruitcake Makes Me Puke.” He’s run a punchline into a three minute country song that has to be a holiday hit cause he said so.
Dr. Elmo supplies motive for why grandma might be targeted by reindeer with “Grandma’s Killer Fruitcake.” Channeling Ray Stevens adds to the bounciness of this howler, but the quality of the video says it all.
Some supposedly supportive songs on fruitcake are bad numbers on purpose, or they are the so-called left-handed compliment.
The bombast of M. Ryan Taylor’s “Ode to a Fruitcake” makes me suspicious. People don’t usually snigger at operatic recitals, do they?
A couple of street corner blues croakers apply their “Fruitcake Song” lyrics metaphorically to sex. They want some, but not that kind.
Spongebob Squarepants spends a few seconds touting “Hot Fruitcake” on his holiday album. It may be tongue in sponge, however.
Bubble Gum Becky from Mighty Magic Pants explodes “Someone Ate My Fruitcake!” at a high school talent holiday shindig. She wanted that dish, but if you listen carefully, she didn’t. Mold, blah, yada, blah.
Cookie Cutter Girl rocks her “Fruitcake Song” rolling out the cornucopia which includes our humble sweetbread. But little digs here and there make me question her hunger levels. This hails from the annual Seattle drag-comedy holiday revue show ‘Ham for the Holidays.’ It’s your basic show stopper.
Here’s something else you don’t see every day… for the holidays ’15 Oregon Lottery tried a Fruitcake scratch-off which did as well as anything else. Their promos from AdJab featured half songs supposedly from an album [Spirit of Fruitcake vol. 4] including “Not on My Table” (country), “What’s that Fruitcake Doing Under My Tree?” (’70s power ballad), “(The Holidays Aint Nuttin) Without My Fruitcake” (electric funk), and the most positive: “Merry Christmas Fruitcake” (lazy lounge lothario). Hey now!
