2001-12 Festive Interview
< Archived Interviews & Articles
"Nothing!" for Christmas
By Señor El Toro, Festive!, Winter 2001
Archived from: https://imgur.com/a/they-might-be-giants-interview-festive-6-2001-U9RT0bu
I have a serious love-hate relationship with They Might Be Giants. In college, my boyfriend Patrick and I were completely enthralled by TMBG's eponymous 1986 debut LP ("Memo to myself: Do the dumb things I gotta do...") and its 1988 follow-up, Lincoln. And 1990's Flood, their first album for a major label, spawned my first published CD review.
But then things began to sour. In 1991, during my disastrous interview with a very stoned Frank Black—a.k.a. Black Francis (still my worst interview of all time, with Shelby Lynne running a close second)—the Pixies frontman accused me of deliberately trying to make him feel stupid, then compared me to his "friend," John Flansburgh of TMBG, who apparently also had a knack for making him feel dim. And a couple years further down the line, when I chatted with Flansburgh for an item for MTV Online, I found him to be downright surly.
So when I got my promotional copy of TMBG's new five-song EP Holidayland (on Restless)—featuring a brand-spanking-new rendition of The Sonics' "Santa Claus," plus the TMBG rarities "Feast of Lights" and "O Tannenbaum," as well as the better- known "Santa's Beard" and "Careless Santa"—I was decidedly nonplussed. But a couple of my friends still swear by the genius of TMBG, so I decided to stick my head back in the lion's mouth and talk to them again. I asked to interview the other half of the band, John Linnell, but instead found myself once more on the phone with Flansburgh, who, it transpires, is not only a huge fan of Christmas, but was also very cordial.
(And yes, he's very, very smart. I honestly thought about including footnotes with this piece, but decided just to add some editorial asides, and leave the rest up to the reader's discretion. I assure you, there are Internet resources out there that can explain such esoteric terms as "V-effect" and "grok" in layman's English.)
Festive!: You cover "Santa Claus," by Seattle legends The Sonics, on your new CD. Are you longtime fans? What made you want to do that song?
John Flansburgh: I heard that song in the '70s, right around the same time I first heard Iggy and the Stooges. My friend Jimmy, who is no longer with us, turned me on to a whole set of things that would generally be categorized as "the punk rock," all in one burst. The thing that I didn't know about the Sonics was, I didn't know how old they were, how mid-'60s they were. What's that other song, that weird stompy one? "Boss Hoss." They're kind of old-fashioned. The Sonics have as much to do with rock 'n' roll as rock. Their [work is] a good example of a transitional kind of song.
But I didn't have any kind of history on them at all. It might even have been off of 45s. There were no dates, no information at all. And I remember thinking, "What a cool name!" What a totally, dead cool name it was. When Sonic Youth were first coming up, and we were doing shows in the East Village, I thought, "You can't call yourself Sonic Youth... there's already a Sonics!" It's like calling yourself The New Beatles. Or the Beatle People. Although there is a band called The Shitty Beatles, which is pretty good. "No, we're the Shitty Beatles, not the Beatles."
But ["Santa Claus"] is an amazingly grabby song. It's pretty unforgettable. And we're always getting requests to do Christmas songs, for charity records, for radio stations. So over the years, we've done a bunch of 'em. And there's so few good Christmas songs, and very few rock Christmas songs that are all that good. The Phil Spector Christmas album seems like a notable exception. I guess the link between, the common ground, is the sleigh bell, because everything Phil Spector does has sleigh bells on it. Besides the Sonics song, I can't think of too many rock songs that work with Christmas. "Father Christmas," that's a good song. It's really sassy. But in some ways it seems kind of dated. The cool thing about the Sonics song is [it doesn’t], except for a little bit of the dopey [language]. What's the line about the chick, "Cute little honey," that seems a little bit immoderate. But a lot of it is just so wonderfully nihilistic. The whole "Nothing!" part is really great. And any excuse to put a big slap echo on my voice is always good for me. Because we rarely ever do that. So it's nice to climb into the Elvis Machine, and listen to the thing reverberating.
What made you guys want to record "O Tannenbaum" in German? Are you a native speaker?
Oh no. There's an otherness to the actual spirit of that song that you're really reminded of when you hear it in German. It's as much for the kind of—this is an extremely pretentious way of putting it—the V-effect when you hear a song in a foreign language. It just makes you listen to it in a different way. It's not the same as hearing Barbara Mandrell singing "O Tannenbaum."
There's a scary thought...
I'm sure she's done it. You could mistake "O Tannenbaum for an un-mysterious piece of music. Also, the original version is truncated, it doesn't have the repeats that the Americanized version does. Which accelerates the melody of it. It's a very cool piece of music. And we were really trying to underscore the sort of mystery of it.
Did you learn it with cue cards, somebody in the studio holding up the phonetic pronunciation?
We actually recorded that song at a sound check. We were playing at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles (It was actually Hollywood High, according to the original seven-inch. – Ed.) And we got somebody's mother or boyfriend, somebody we knew spoke German, and did the phonetic translation. We had the sheet music, and they helped us. I'm sure if a German-speaker heard it, it's probably a really brutalized version of German. It was really just an experiment. It's a five-piece band playing it, but we actually managed to pull out an arrangement that sounds like more people playing, which is the coolest thing about it. I think Linnell might have switched off instruments halfway through the song.
And I like your German pronunciation. It gives the lyric a... chewy texture.
[Laughs] "Chewy!" That's a pull quote. I don't know, it sounds like German to me.
Let's talk about "Feast of Lights." Why aren't there more good Chanukah pop songs? Why must school children be forced to live year-in, year-out with "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" as their sole concession to Jewish classmates?
"Feast of Lights" is pretty dire. But I think it reflects an emotion that only comes up at Christmas time... I mean, holiday time. There's another song in our history that kind of runs parallel to that track, called "We Just Go Nuts At Christmastime."
Isn't that the flip side to the "O Tannenbaum" seven-inch?
No, that's a song called "Christmas Cards," which is a really fucked-up recording that was performed completely spontaneously. We just rolled tape. Nobody knew what key anybody was going to play in. It was completely experimental, and it came out okay. But I don't know if it holds up to repeated listening, and it didn't seem as action-packed as other tracks we included [on the CD].
But there is this song that John Linnell has decided to suppress, but which I will tell you about, because I personally feel it's an extremely strong piece of material, called "We Just Go Nuts At Christmastime." It's kind of the Christian brother of "Feast of Lights." It's all about the dread of trying to hang with your family for an extended period of time, which is about as universal an issue as you'll find. Forget about commercializing the holidays; who could care about that? What about breaking the 24 hour barrier with your folks? That's the tough part of the holidays: Not arguing with your relations.
Wondering "At what point in our visit will Mom have her meltdown?" and "How many drinks can I have before dinner without somebody saying something?"
I didn't really drink very much in my twenties. The idea of actually having a drink in front of my parents mortified me, because I was too nervous. But as somebody who has become a more confident social drinker since then, the ability to have a drink in front of my parents has really helped. God bless the social lubricant of alcohol. Because as much as people say about it, it puts a lovely sort of fuzzy glow around all the hard edges that were previously untenable. So I'm all for that. I find myself just singing along with my Mom as she's stuffing the turkey. It seems much jollier with a little bit of that 80-proof eggnog.
But why aren't there more Chanukah songs?
I don't know. John and I, neither of us are Jewish. We wrote the song at the request of...
The Jews?
Yes, of the Jews. Our Jewish friends reached out to us. There was this compilation record being made by one of the original owners of the Knitting Factory, and he was collecting a bunch of Chanukah songs. Because he felt like there should be a Chanukah record. "What about Chanukah?" So we cooked up the track, to revisit the "We Just Go Nuts At Christmastime" concept, but in a way that was clearly masked from our actual family and relations.
What do you think distinguishes a good seasonal song—and we're not necessarily talking just Christmas and Chanukah here—from a poor or mediocre one?
That's a good question. Some holidays [don't lend themselves to the task]. I haven't heard any Arbor Day songs... (Wrong, although the cover of his State Songs solo album is a lovely, verdant green.—Ed.)
I thought Linnell had recorded one.
Did he? I dunno. Do you know those Russian performance artists... I can't remember their names... they did the cover of the Dave Eggers book, they do these really ponderous paintings that they kind of commission. (Their names are Komar and Melamid – Ed.) They're two guys, from the former Soviet Union, and they've got this very odd take on democracy. They'll do these surveys of audiences: "What do you want to hear in a song?" And they'll find the certain traits people most want to hear. And then they'll find the ten traits that people want to hear the least.
Anyway, they created this piece ["The Most Unwanted Song"]—it was actually realized through a grant, and I'm sure some right wing thug would use this as an illustration of why grants should be outlawed—and it's the worst of everything, in one piece of music.
They said, "What are your least favorite kinds of songs?" And the summation was, "We don't like songs that are really long," so they made it like ten minutes long. "We don't like songs with rapping in it," so like half of it is rap. "We don't like opera singers," so it's actually an opera singer rapping. "We don't like children singing," so there's a children's choir behind the opera singer-rapper. "We don't like accordions," and "We don't like songs that are slow," so it's really ponderously slow. And "We don't like songs about holidays," so it's basically the entire calendar year of holidays rattled off...
In an operatic rap...
Right. I just remember the children's choir going [sings] "Yom Kippur... Yom Kippur... Arbor Day... Arbor Day..." and going through every little part of the calendar. It's really fantastic. I know the Dia Foundation are the people who put up the dough, and you can buy the disc through their web site. It's really, really good.
So we can deduce that a good seasonal song must be short.
And shouldn't have operatic rapping. It's not hard to do a good Christmas song, because Santa is such a good idea. Santa's a great concept for a song, he's like this weird, odd-man-out. You can kind of fool around with the idea in pretty fun ways. There's a really good Elvis Presley Santa song (Leiber & Stoller's "Santa Claus Is Back In Town." – Ed.) He's a good figure for songwriting, because he's this outside figure looming over stuff.
It's hard to write a good Halloween song. It might almost be impossible to write a good Halloween song. Because the idea is already over the top, so it's basically just "Boo!" It's too much. It's hard to find. At its best, it's hard to find any poetry there; at its worst, it's so over-decorated as a concept that it just arrives overblown. I'm trying to think of other holidays... "My Funny Valentine," that's a pretty good one.
"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"
Fantastic! I was unaware of that song till I heard the Gap ad with Rufus Wainwright. And I have to say, Rufus Wainwright really missed a golden opportunity by not doing more with that song. I think a lot of people heard that song and thought it was great. That could have been a hit.
That's why we're not record company guys.
Because we actually know how things sound. We actually care about music. It's funny... I'm sure the reason nothing happened with it had more to do with, being a young songwriter, all you want is for people to hear your songs. I produced a track for Freedy Johnston a couple years ago, this Marshall Crenshaw song, "You're My Favorite Waste of Time."
That's a beautiful song.
It's a fantastic song. And it was only a B-side for Marshall Crenshaw, although everybody noticed it. And it was recorded as just a demo; on his version, it has a false start and you can hear the tape sliding out. It has a very cassette-recorder-on- the-edge of the bed [vibe]. So we recorded this song, and my intention was like, "Hey, let's get Freedy a hit." This is a great song, he does a great version of it, he's friends with Marshall, Marshall played the guitar solo on it and did a great job. We had this rockin' arrangement. And for Freedy, I think he felt like, "If it's not me doing the writing, how's that gonna be good for me?"
It's funny. We've recorded probably 300 songs, as They Might Be Giants, and out of all the songs we've covered maybe 15 or 20 songs, which is not that many. But a good, artfully chosen cover can bring a whole dimension into what you're doing that you might not be able to get to otherwise. We do the song "New York City," which is originally written by the band Cub, from Vancouver. They're like a riot girl band, and their version of it was pretty rough. Ours is more like a straight pop song.
But what's great about it is that, in terms of point of view, it's not actually a gender-specific song at all. But it was written by a woman, and I think people find hearing a man sing that sentiment exciting, because it has that vulnerability and sweetness to it that you just don't ever hear guys putting in their songs. I don't think I could even write that in one of my songs; I'm just not equipped to completely be that straight and sweet. But when I heard the song, I completely related to it, and I thought what a good choice that would be as a cover, because it has that extra quality to it. I guess what I'm saying is, when you do a cover, it's not just a random act. You can really take your own expression to another level.
It should still be an extension of your aesthetic.
Exactly. I guess a lot of people who do covers have more obtuse [reasons]. Maybe that's true for us, too. I'm thinking of Van Halen, doing those weird covers that are so terrible on their second album. A lot of times the impulse is pretty crass, or it seems like it's coming from somewhere else. It's not an artist choice. It's like it's an outside choice.
"The holidays are here—you need to record this, kid!" Speaking of Santa... Which would you rather be, and why?: A department store Santa or a Salvation Army Santa,
Well, first of all, the Salvation Army Santa has to be outside, right? So I'd vote for the comfort of the indoors. The Salvation Army's got the tunes, but the department store Santa's got the energy.
Department store Santa has to deal with the kids on his lap all day. And the parents shepherding the kids.
Yeah, I guess that would be a strange emotional purgatory. What a weird job that would be. Would it be fun? I can't imagine doing that. I've been to department stores Santas as a kid, and even that felt really weird. It was kind of like acting. You had to pretend that this man is Santa, and you had to pretend it meant something to you. It reminded me of some of the falsest stuff of my childhood, because it was only for my Mom.
Right, so they could take the photo for the family Christmas card.
Or, hear—get a clue of what you definitely wanted. Because you can't just tell your Mom what you want.
Never. But think about all the different things you would hear as a department store Santa. Someone should write a song about that. You would hear horrible things that made you think, "Oh my God, kids are exposed to too much television," but then you might hear really sad things, too. Like kids who don't want anything, or just a hot meal.
Or to have their Dad come back. I'm sure there's a lot of that. It's pretty much open season on heartache. It's treacherous, to say the least. You know, that Salvation Army Santa [gig] is sounding better and better.
At least you're autonomous. You can ring that damn bell as fast or slow as you wish.
But isn't there often a tuba player standing by as well?
Yes, I believe you are often paired with a musician of such nature.
I don't know much about the Salvation Army. I don't know how it operates. I don't know how much of the Christ child has to be worked in to the raps.
And their Santas always seem rather dingy.
Well, they've been through a lot.
They've been outdoors for weeks and weeks. Are there any Christmas recordings—rock or non-rock—that you find especially heartwarming or especially loathsome?
I have a Mills Brothers Christmas album that's pretty clean. It's just vocals and very light instrumentation, as opposed to most Christmas records, which are these over- the-top productions. I've always been fond of the Mills Brothers. They've got a really good vocal blend.
I'm trying to think of other Christmas [records]. The Phil Spector Christmas record is pretty strong. As a teenager, I had this record that I got for free that was one of the most freakish things I have ever heard. And I would love to find it [again]. I have no idea what happened to it. It was the people who did "A Fifth of Beethoven." (Walter Murphy & His Big Apple Band, featuring members of Chic!—Ed.) On the heels of the success of "A Fifth of Beethoven," they did a disco Christmas album, with the exact same passion with which they tackled Beethoven's Fifth. And it was supernaturally strange. I'm sure it was recorded in July with copious amounts of cocaine involved.
And probably done in real time, no overdubs.
Exactly. Some waving of the hands to indicate it was time for the bass solo.
Remember the Hooked On... medleys? I have the Hooked On Christmas album, which is about 112 seasonal songs all crammed together.
It could bookend with this album. That sounds really tantalizing.
Tantalizing, and yet horribly disorienting.
Who needs to fly to Tokyo to feel disoriented...
When you have 112 Christmas songs flying at your head like machine gun fire. "Silent Night" is the most introspective moment, and it's something like thirty- eight seconds long.
So do you have a healthy collection of Christmas records?
I would say at this point my collection of Christmas records is downright unhealthy. I probably have about 225 Christmas albums, and about 75 seven- inch singles, and a couple hundred Christmas CDs. I like Christmas music.
Wow. When do you start playing it? Is it open season the day after Thanksgiving?
Well... there are certain things you're allowed to play all year round, like The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping."
[Waitresses guitarist-songwriter] Chris Butler looms really large in the history of They Might Be Giants. If we had not met him, we probably would never have been able to make any recordings. He lent us his drum machine, to make our very first recording, back when even the simplest drum machine—like a DMX with four buttons—cost like two thousand dollars. Because at that point, he was a successful recording artist. He had just done The Waitresses, and had a lot of record company money.
I'll never forget, he was handing off this drum machine to us, this was probably 1984, and we were sitting at the counter at Junior's in Brooklyn, having a BLT. And he was like, "I gotta tell you... don't make records. Just don't do it." And I was like, "Chris, what are you talking about? You've made such great records!" And "Christmas Wrapping" is a great example. Musically, it's very sophisticated. The whole riff of it is in that weird time signature. It's totally cool. And I guess the Spice Girls did a cover of that song that will probably keep Chris' gas bills paid for the rest of his life.
Did you ever as a child or a grown-up—throw a big fit when you didn't receive a gift you wanted for Christmas?
I was really calculating about the Christmas gifts. I distinctly remember peeking in my parents' closet, and finding what were obviously the Christmas gifts for me or my brother. And there was a Corgi car of the James Bond Austin-Martin, that opens and has the ejector seat. But it didn't say whether it was for me or my brother. And this was not something I discussed with my brother, I was on my own private reconnaissance mission. But what I did was made a sign of the 007 logo, just did some personal artwork expressing what a fan I was of James Bond, and taped it to the door of my room, which was my bulletin board of where I was at. And sure enough, it worked. I scored the car. It was manipulative, but I had to go for it.
Do you remember what your brother's A-list gift was that year?
I don't. My family went really whole-hog into gift giving, in this way that was completely, unashamedly pro-consumer, pro-toy, pro-get-what-you-want. Dig it! It was always like that, and it's still kind of like that. I spend a sick amount of money on Christmas, for no particular reason except that that's the way it goes in my family. Everybody get presents, everybody gives everybody multiple presents. It's a big-time thing. If somebody said, "Hey, let's cool it this year..."
"Let's just draw names and do a gift exchange with a spending limit..."
My parents aren't like that. They're not into that. They want the stuff. And they're very specific. Everybody's got their very specific desires. It's pretty full-on, and kind of embarrassingly so, to be perfectly honest. But what can you do?
So it's unlikely you've ever thrown a Christmas tantrum, because you're accustomed to getting what you want every year.
Oh yeah. It's embarrassing. My parents are big on the big gifts. When I was like 10 years old, My Dad gave me this model Jaguar. It was like a car kit model, like a Revell model car, but on a really different scale. Usually they're like one-to-whatever, but this one was half of that. The thing must have been four feet long. It had the entire engine to be assembled. And it was altogether way too complicated for my 10-year-old brain. It was going to be a thing that my father and I would do together, but of course my Dad, who's an architect, he builds models all day. The last thing he wants to do when he comes home is spend another couple hours building a model. So it just sat for years and years in a state of semi-completion. It was completely too big to ignore, yet too complicated to realize. It was a catastrophe.
Do you have special Christmas traditions at the Flansburgh household?
We've got the stockings by the fireplace, we leave cookies out for Santa, make eggnog. We do it all. I grew up in a house with a fireplace, and that's the classic set-up. I can't remember the moment of not believing [in Santa]. I don't remember thinking, "It's a lie." It must have happened at some point, but I just don't know when it did. Or maybe it's just one of those things where, since it's a lie you still want to believe in, it's kind of a soft landing. Maybe it wasn't like a thunderbolt.
In terms of traditions, often if my Mom is there, and my aunt is there, they'll sing songs at the piano. Which was pretty thrilling. They grew up in the '30s, when playing and singing was a commonplace thing. And they would harmonize, and sing all these songs that just came out of nowhere. And it was pretty entertaining. In fact, I think that's where I first heard "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," was them singing it. Because I didn't really know the recorded version at all. So that was roots music for me. It's a pretty nice time. I keep on trying to remind all my grumpy friends that [Christmas] can be kind of great. Give in to it.
Do you guys have a tree in the home?
Every year. I'm actually talking to you from the Catskill Mountains. We have a house up here, and the trees are plentiful. We go down to the local place and pick one up from one of the Christmas tree farms, which are all around. It's nice. It smells really great. It's completely insane. But the whole plant-it-afterwards thing does not work. You can't plant a tree in the middle of winter. I've found that out.
That frozen ground can be a bit discouraging.
Yeah, that's a real non-starter. And also, getting a slightly more manageable tree is kind of good. As they get old, they're bears to get out the door. But we've got a little stack of Christmas trees in the back yard, the ghosts of Christmas past, looming large in the landfill. Decorating the tree, making custom decorations, getting crazy with that stuff is good. Experimenting with monochromatic trees, or just doing it with lights, there's a lot of fun experimentation to be had with a tree.
"This year we're just doing candles and paper streamers..."
That would be the last Christmas. You know what I've always wanted to find—and it's really difficult—are the old, large, super vivid lights.
The ones the size of a big toe?
Yeah. They were really bright colors, like RED and GREEN and BLUE and YELLOW. Candyland colors. That was a big part of my childhood, and it just seems like that stuff is completely gone away, like they've been forever banished from the culture. I'm sure they were unsafe, and I know that they're unstable...
Did you ever touch one as a kid? They got so super-hot.
I think they went away because the people who had them have all been killed in horrible accidents involving fire. And the other thing is, when one of 'em blew, they would all blow, and then maybe even cause some kind of short. It just seemed like the defined dangerous. But I think it's worth the risk. They look really smokin'.
That's a story to pitch to Fox News: "The Hidden Perils of Christmas."
I'm sure there are plenty. Actually, my biggest peeve with Christmas is hack journalists doing continual retreads on how terrible it is that Christmas has been commercialized. Nothing about the commercialization of Christmas is nearly as dreadful as the stories about the commercialization of Christmas. Because if those stories did not exist, nobody would feel that way. It's really manageable. We all live in a world of commerce. There's stores, Main Street of every town is lined with stores that sell stuff all year round. And if it's not a President's Day sale, or a white sale, it's gonna be a Christmas sale. And as far as I can tell, the Christmas sales are actually just a little more [together]. They clean the store before they put things on display, which is not such a bad thing. And they make sure that the selection is good, which is not exactly a crisis either. So hearing people [in the media] drone on and on about how Christmas has been ruined... they're the ones who are ruining it, because they don't have any ideas. They can't think of anything new to say, so they just write the same old "Oh, Christmas Is Ruined" story. Come on! A year and a half of journalism school and that's all you learned? "Christmas Is Bad?" My God, gimme a break.
Do you and Linnell exchange gifts at Christmas?
Yeah, I've given John some Christmas gifts. I tend to give John birthday gifts more than Christmas gifts. I don't know why that is. A lot of times, I'll give John gifts that I think nobody else would give him, because they're kind of music-specific. Like I gave John a really nice clarinet. I don't know if he would have bought one himself, but I knew that if he had it, it would get used. Specific things like that... Hold on a minute, my phone is going crazy.
[Short pause] We just got offered a New Year's Eve gig for an insane amount of money.
Playing where?
In Baltimore, MD.
That's not such a bad gig. There are worse places to spend New Year's Eve.
It's a little close to Washington, DC, which come terrorism time is a little bit of a drag. But the good thing is, it's a drive away, not an airplane flight away. And the money is insane!
Let the record show that Mr. Flansburgh is flabbergasted by the enormity of this offer.
I'm lovin' it! We've played many New Year's Eves, and it's always a strange night to be working. But if you're a working band, you can't say no. It's the one day that people actually pay. It's a good night for musicians. I feel like I'm Mr. Capitalist in this interview: "I love the money!"
Now that we're grown-ups, do you feel like the presentation of Chanukah in the public schools – that whole pitch that "it's like Christmas, but their presents get parceled out for eight days!"—was all screwed up?
"My best friend was Jewish, and I grew up in a very Waspy place, with a name that is often confused with being Jewish. People think Flansburgh, you gotta be Jewish. It's very interesting experiencing prejudice second-hand. It's a good life lesson. Because how you deal with it is a real character test. Declaring yourself not Jewish is not the point.
There was an out-Christmasing of Christmas that was the official rap, so people would accept the otherness [of Chanukah]. "It's like Christmas, but you get more days of stuff." Which is not necessarily true. Unless you count socks [as presents]. But that was just good PR from the tribe.
But it's interesting, when I think of it, that Chanukah was presented as such a multicultural event. It was presented as being ten times weirder than how I would imagine... oh, what is the official African-American holiday? Kwanza. I don't quite grok Kwanza. Kwanza was just created in the '60s, right? (Actually, it was 1972. -- Ed.) But everybody has a right to celebrate whatever they want. For me, I'm not a Christian, but I believe in Christmas. And I believe in Santa Claus as a spiritual figure. And I know that seems insane, but that's the part I like. I actually don't like the religious part.
You prefer Christmas divorced from that messy business of walking down the aisle of the church wearing your bathrobe and clutching a baby doll designated Jesus.
Yeah, I'm really not into that. I'm into the familial, get close to your family. appreciate each other, stuff. That part appeals to me. And the myth of Santa Claus is really quite wonderful......
Myth? What do you mean "myth?"
I mean spirit of Santa Claus.
Last question: Is it easier to get laid at Christmas time?
Definitely. It's like the high school reunion thing; you're back, but you're an adult. You know what I'm saying. There's more booze. And there's a lot of office parties, you've got everything happening.
You have opportunities to offer up displays of affection that might be out of place on, say, Arbor Day.
[Singing] "Arbor Day... Arbor Day... Yom Kippur... Yom Kippur..."