Category: Caroldies (parodies of carols)

King Wenceslaus is actually Saint Wenceslaus, but originally 10th C Duke Wenceslas who gave alms to the poor on Saint Stephens Day 12/26. In 1853 serial hymnalist John Mason Neale wrote the song to honor this exemplary  Xian charity. Later, Thomas Helmore added music from a 13th C spring carol. So the problem largely is the sprightly dance music paired with the high moral lesson. It’s like a California roll with red wine. I mean, come on.

If you just wanna know what the story is check our good kidder William Shatner with his spoken word “Wenceslas” from his 2009 album. He does all the parts.

To ponder the triviality of the story remind yourself of its mention as a DnD clue in The Big Bang Theory. Oh those nerds!

A further tribute to the song’s complicated uselessness is picked up by Buford in his version on Phineas and Ferb.

The big message here leads others to comment on our salacious lives too. Beware your crass commercialism in the hard-to-understand Tree Town Ukes get-together “Hanuk-Wanza-Festi-Mas.”

Even more moral is Burt Meyer with his “earth parody” of GKW wherein he calls us onto the carpet for stinginess, oil spills, and rampant gunneryism. Wenceslaus calls us a lost cause here. Wah.

So let’s lighten the mood with “Good King Wenceslas Tastes Great–A Zombie Carol” by Michael P Spradlin. Great double entendres from the original lyrics, and these guys keep the rhythm.

Meaner but much shorter is Mr. Weebl’s Advent Calendar, Day 13.  Fifth grade humor.

Comic Relief (part 2) has gone all out with a sequel to GKW. What happens after he brings food and firewood to the poor? Well, there are revenge reveals and tawdry twists aplenty, that’s what.

Finally we come to Horrible Histories’ “Good King Wenceslas” which purports to get to the awful truth. Brace yourself for some Medieval tabloid tattling.

Back in 1843 Adolphe Adam composed ‘Cantique de Noel’ in honor of a new church organ in Roquemaure France. As per uzh someone else wrote the words a long time before. ‘Minuit, chretiens’ was about the Godchild popping out, but sounded better in Francois. John Sullivan Dwight cobbled together our Englander version a couple handfuls of years later.

The big deal with this holy hymnal is the high range involved. It ain’t easy to do this right.

South Parkers play the boring lyrics with their violent version and still bring it around to the high notes. But no decent parodising.

Angry but reverent, Irish Junkie Tom sings “Oh Holy Night” as a raging night out with da boiz. Bring a translating dictionary.

Toward the other side of the planet, Philipino Terence Lelis mocks lightly the nasty police scandal thereabouts from a handful of years back with “O Hulidap.” Captioned, but still needs translating.

Our Jewish brethren pile on the J-kid as expected with Leslie Caplan’s “Oy Holy Night.” It’s funny AND operatic so you’ll be glad of the captioning (what did she just sing?).

Getting down with his guitar and his message, Todd Chappelle (hey, he did a great Christmas song about Delaware) sings “October Night.” It’s about decorations too early, yada yada. But he’s got a great voice.

Adult theming leads us to “O Horny Night” by Raquela. It’s fifty shades of advent, so not that nasty. (You know, fall on your knees, snigger.) And she can sing, too.

For my myrrh nothing mocks the sanctity of this solemnity more than 13 Hands in a magnificent cathedral belting out “Josh Grow Beans.” Wow, nearly speechless. (Thanks for the captioning, natch.)

Best of show, however is Tessa Netting. She gives us the real meaning of the song with her “O Holy Shit.” Mildly appropriate  profanity… nothing worse than you’d hear in the mall parking lot with kids around. And she does the second verse most people leave out.

Somewhere in the 1830s in Germany (those guys knew how to Christmas) August Zarnack married some old folk song with a variation of a song written about the Paradise Tree (you know, from the Garden of E… somehow reimagined as a fir tree because it held the promise of eternal life something something something God). Ernst Anschutz added more lyrics later and the kids just went holiday crazy.

Because the symbolism of a tree inside our house for Jesus has long been lost, we kid.

Those wacky Vancouverites, The Yule Be Sorrys, are back with an attempted explanation why we allow this ancient custom to persist: “O Xmas Tree.”

A fine male churchy quartet (John Miller, Lyle Stutzman, Eldo Miller, and Willard Mast) also play this out with their “O Christmas Tree.” Great harmony! Where’s your barber pole?

Peter Adamson furthers the disagreements with materialism with his “O Christmas Tree.” It’s folky and satiric with a gentle agenda.

Party down with nog pukin’ and slack key! “Oh Tom Got Bombed” by Dave Rudolf purposely mistranscribes the German and builds a scenario around the drunken mess. Comedy for barf’s sake.

Jaci Lapointe cuts a different point with her “O Christmas Tree.” I mean, the poor thing! Torn from its wintry ground and stuck in our smelly, smokey house!

Which reminds me of Bob Rivers’s awfully sad “O Christmas Tree.” But let’s stave off the sawed-off blues for now. Laters i will devote a week or so just to songs about The Tree. Without using this particular melody we will have some blasting fun.

For now, let’s celebrate Samuel Stokes. Like a smaller version of Tom Lehrer this academic has applied his philosophies to the betterment of amusing colleges with musicals about Dracula and Robin Hood. His funny songs are popular with the Dr. Demento show. So give an ear to his explication “O Tannenbaum (This Song has Many Versions).”

Somewhere around the year 1700, European churches began to allow Christmas carols to be sung. Before then only David’s Psalms were considered holy enough to be sung. Nahum Tate, so the story goes, was inspired by Luke 2:8-14 and dared to noodle out lyrics improving on The New Writ. It became “When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” and was sung by different melodies over the centuries, including that of ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.’ Eventually music from an opera by Handel became what we know today, according to Ace Collins’s books about the origins of carols.

Apparently the British make joke with ‘When Shepherds WASHED Their Socks by Night’ they way we do with ‘Jingle bells, Batman smells….’ A young bloke carries on through this standard travesty with youth and  cheek.  Crisis Christmas gobble out their few funny verses through a relentlessly paced high-pitched organ karaoke.

Mistletoe and Swine play an annoying medley of “When Shepherds Washed Their Socks/Good King Wenceslaus” as if they were they the class clowns trying to get you to let your hair down (or smack them). Sheep bleating is just what this melody needed. Not.

The Mason Family sing [badly] their own version of “When Shepherds Washed their Socks by Night” without much humor besides the initial wordplay. It’s still a fine looking family doing what Santa-Dad says.

The bestest caroldy of them all, however, is a little known one by Vancouver’s homegrown humorists The Yule Be Sorrys. Their 1994 album Oh Holey Socks features “The New While Shepherds Washed Their Socks by Night.” (Yeah we’re still on that old joke, but this time it’s funny.) (At least it seems to make fun of an actual French soap product.) (And they’re Canadian.) (So, it’s not offensive.)

Because a good lampoon requires wit, here are lyrics:

While shepherds washed their socks by nite
All seated ‘round the tub,
A bar of Starlight soap came down,
And they began to scrub!
“What wondrous sight is this?” they cried,
“A miracle divine!
Our socks no longer will hang stiff
As they dry on the line!”
Then from this modest bar of soap
There spewed such copious suds,
Without a word these good shepherds
Tore off their filthy duds!
They hurled their grubbies in the tub
And they scrubbed them then and there,
While “Cleanliness is next to godliness”
Intoned their prayer.
Then gazing heavenward they saw
An awesome superstar.
A chorus line behind him chimed
“Come to the Starlight bar!”
“Good, tidy, neat and clean we’ll be.”
They joyously proclaimed.
“Our stockings will no longer stink,
Nor will their soles be stained!”