a holiday f*ckin' tradition
sing it, Brenda
This was originally posted in December 2023. We are sharing it again now for two reasons: one, because it’s a nice placeholder through the holiday season until the newsletter kicks off again in January; and two, because it is very important and people need to know.
Brenda Lee was 13 when she recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” back in 1958. That’s kind of wild, in part because her voice does not sound like the voice of a 13-year-old and in part because 13 is, like, very young to do anything. It’s also wild because the song was written by the same dude who wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in 1949 and “Holly Jolly Christmas” in 1962, which is a heck of a decade-plus Christmas heater. His name was Johnny Marks. Johnny Marks would also be a cool name for like a pool hustler or guy who hangs around a horse track a lot. Maybe that’s what this Johnny Marks was up to when he wasn’t cranking out holiday bangers. Let’s just go ahead and pretend that one is true.
In November 2023, she released a new music video for the song, which she starred in at age 78. Good for Brenda. Better for Brenda: the re-release resulted in the song rocketing back up to number one on the Billboard 100 a full 65 years after it was originally released. It’s funny to think about that just from a passage of time perspective. If you go back another 65 years before the original recording, to 1893, America still had only 44 states. We were still short Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii. John Philip Sousa was the most popular musical artist of the day. Babe Ruth hadn’t even been born yet. I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia this week.
Anyway, that’s Brenda up there in the video at the top of the page, doing great.
The other nice thing about all of this is that it gives me a great excuse to point out one of my favorite holiday-related things, which is that it really does kind of sound like Brenda Lee says the f-word in this song. It’s the kind of thing you can never unhear once someone points it out to you and it brings me more happiness than you can possibly imagine to be the one to point it out to people.
It happens early on in the song, in the second verse, which starts around the 0:20 mark of that video up there, where she sings this…
Rockin' around the Christmas tree
Let the Christmas spirit ring
Later we'll have some pumpkin pie
And we'll do some caroling
Did you hear it? Did you hear her say “Later we’ll have some fuckin’ pie”? Go back and listen to it again if you didn’t. You will this time. And every time you hear it for the rest of your life. I’m very sorry but also you are very welcome.
I’ve been doing this for over two decades now, pointing out the misheard profanity in this song to people, both in real life and on the internet. I get people reaching out to me about it every year. I usually get a text from my mom in late November that says “i just heard my first fuckin pie!” which is a really fun thing to explain to anyone who sees the text pop up on my phone with no other context. The whole thing might be my favorite Christmas tradition. I am barely joking.
Two notes in closing:
To get the full image here, I recommend picturing a frazzled mom at the holidays, just fried with shopping and school plays and two bratty kids who want to know when dessert will be ready, and she just wants FIVE MINUTES to relax and have A NICE CHRISTMAS for ONCE and she finally snaps and shouts “LATER WE’LL HAVE SOME FUCKIN’ PIE AND WE’LL DO SOME CAROLING”
If you are anything like me, you will have a lot of fun explaining this to people every time the song comes on for the rest of your entire life
Merry Christmas, guys.