Burl Ives must die

It is time to end the tyranny of “Holly Jolly Christmas,” a song which gets stuck in the heads of millions each year, driving them to a slow, sputtering insanity, and if desecration of the grave of a beloved old leftist folksinger is the only way to end this, count me in. For starters, I always hated that “Rudolph” special. For some reason, the animation always creeped me out; plus, it was the same animation used for the electric shaver ads featuring Santa riding a Norelco, an image I could neither understand nor wipe from my mind. So, that’s one strike. Also, I could never stand Burl Ives. I didn’t like his voice, I didn’t like his fatness, and as a child I suspected there was something more than slightly evil about the guy. (And that was before I knew he had played Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” big blubbery hand on Maggie’s belly, raging about mendacity.) On top of that, one of the only record albums we owned when I was a kid was a Burl Ives platter of “children’s songs,” horrifying ditties rendered in that jaunty Burl Ives style, including a bowdlerized version of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” that, even with the removal of references to “little streams of alcohol,” was a completely inappropriate song for children. Cigarette trees? Jayzus. Two strikes. And then, there’s that hideous, unstoppable song, which seems to be nothing more than an endless loop of the chorus. Once in your brain, it never leaves. It’ll be April and a few bars of it will still sneak out. I hesitated even to name it, for fear of infecting others.
The song must die. And the singer with it. This is my fatwa.
(Great, now I’m going to get Googled for fatwa.)