A Christmas Carol (Live)

(Spoken)
One very familiar type of song is the Christmas carol, although it is perhaps a bit out of season at this time however, I'm informed by my disk jockey friends – of whom I have none – that in order to get a song popular by Christmas time, you have to start plugging it well in advance. So here
Goes. It has always seemed to me after all, that Christmas with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in – I refer of course, to money. And yet none of the Christmas carols that you hear on the radio or in the street even attempt to capture the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it in the United States, that is to say the commercial spirit. So I should like to offer the following Christmas carol for next year, as being perhaps a bit more appropriate

(Sung)
Christmas time is here, by golly
Disapproval would be folly
Deck the halls with hunks of holly
Fill the cup and don't say when

Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens
Even though the prospect sickens
Brother, here we go again

On Christmas Day you can't get sore
Your fellow man you must adore
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four

Relations, sparing no expense, 'll
Send some useless old utensil
Or a matching pen and pencil
("Just the thing I need, how nice!")

It doesn't matter how sincere it is
Nor how heart felt the spirit
Sentiment will not endear it
What's important is the price

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings
Advertising wondrous things
God rest ye merry merchants
May ye make the Yuletide pay
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and – buy!

So let the raucous sleigh-bells jingle
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle
Driving his reindeer across the sky
Don't stand underneath when they fly by