By Pat Cashman

It was a delight to see it on the morning TV news: Video of eager holiday shoppers pushing, shoving, gouging, scratching, clawing and garroting each other to be the first into the stores. After all, when it comes to catching an elbow in the mouth, it’s better to give than receive.

And the malls, offices, coffee shops, drug stores and dentist offices are all playing holiday songs these days---just in case we forgot what time of year it is. In fact, there’s at least one radio station around here that starts running Christmas music just prior to Thanksgiving Day---and plans to play nothing else through New Years. That ka-ching sound you hear? It’s another royalty check going to Jose Feliciano. The holiday music tact works such ratings wonders for that radio station, you can expect next year they’ll start playing the stuff just after the 4th of July.

When I was a kid, I was such a crumby singer that when time came for the school’s annual Christmas recital, the music teacher placed me in the very back row of the choir.
Even then, she could still hear me.

“Tell you what, Pat,” she said. “Why don’t you just move your lips as if you were actually singing---but don’t actually sing?” So I gave it a try---and I turned out to be good at it. If I’d stuck with it I might have turned to politics, where appearing to say something---but actually not---is often required.

But when word got out that I wasn’t really singing, the rest of the chorus complained to the teacher. “Why should we knock ourselves out, while Cashman just fakes it?” So the teacher again pulled me aside and said I wasn’t going to be a part of the chorus anymore. “We’re going to give you more of a featured role instead,” she said. I was put in charge of the sound effects: jingle bell ringing, horse hooves clopping and so on. My best was “the sound of knocking on a door.” I created it using just my knuckles---and a door.

The best thing about traditional holiday music is that it’s so comforting and familiar---we all know the songs and the words. That’s also the problem with it.

Hot buttered rums can also be comforting and familiar, but downing too many, too often---is not a good idea. Plus, it can make your waistline widen to bowl-full-of-jelly size---and give you a hot-buttered hangover the next day. This has been proven in studies at universities such as the School of Mixology.
One time, while walking to my car in a downtown parking garage, I heard an argument taking place right near the entrance. A spectacularly inebriated guy was bellowing at another, “No, you idiot! It was eleven lords a dancing, not seven!”
“The lords were leaping not dancing, you fathead”, shouted the other guy. “And there were TEN of them!”
“Oh yea?” yelled back the first guy again. “Then WHO was dancing?”
“The maids! The nine maids!”
“Wrong! They were milking!”
“Milking what? Those French hens from earlier?”
Shortly thereafter, the two were out of my earshot. I wish I’d stuck around for the discussion of the pipers and drummers.

Speaking of holiday music, people who live around here shouldn’t have to listen to
stuff written years ago by people in Germany, England or even Hollywood---and then played incessantly on that particular radio station mentioned earlier.
How about some new titles that we can embrace locally?
Coincidentally, I worked out some new possibilities in my spare time---which I probably have too much of:

• “Let It Rain, Let It Rain, Let It Rain.”
• “Here We Come A Bothell-ling”(It’s a tune that could be played for a day or a lifetime.)
• “O Renton-baum” (The popular preference, although a case could be made for ‘O Kent-enbaum’)
• “Port Angeles, We Have Heard on High”(alternate title: “Port Angeles, We Have Heard While High.”)
• “I’m Dreaming of White Center”
• “Have Yourself a Marysville Christmas”
• “Duvall Hear What I Hear?”
• “O Little Town of Bellingham”
• “Good King Issaquahs”
• “Federal Way in a Manger”
• “Frosty the Snohomish Man”

One more:
“I Saw Mommy Kissing Enumclaws”

pat@patcashman.com
Pat can be seen on the new sketch TV show “Up Late NW” airing Saturdays on KING 5 and throughout Washington and Oregon. He also co-hosts a weekly on-line talk show: www.Peculiarpodcast.com