I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Stay safe and enjoy the time with your family and friends.

The Christmas Season is once again upon us, and soon you will be put into situations where you will want to join with others and sing the songs of the season. This may mean that you will sing a solo piece at church, or if you are fortunate enough to make a living making music, you may be entertaining large crowds. Everyone, myself included, loves the traditional carols which have flourished for decades, and hearing them always brings a little happiness and cheer.

However, some of you out there are ruining the joy that Christmas music brings. You are literally strangling all of the joy and happiness out of the music before our very ears. How? With the warble.

First made famous by Whitney Houston when she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl awhile back, warbling is when the singer holds a note for much longer than was intended, and then tries to sound like a jazz saxaphone player by singing free-form melody over the background music. The problem is, 99 times out of a hundred, this sounds like someone stomping on a cat’s tail. Its just that irritating.

Now, don’t get your little feelings hurt. I know you are just trying to “make the song your own.” What you need to remember is this: The audience doesn’t want you to make the song your own. They don’t want to listen to you warble on and on. They just want to hear the damn song the way it was written.

You see, the reason why the audience wants you to stick to the music is because of what the music represents. It isn’t about you, or your multi-octave voice, or your musical identity. This music is about time spent with family on Christmases past, about your family’s holiday traditions and memories. Yes, we love the music, but mostly we love the memories the music evokes in us.

Your warbling drives a stake right through the center of those memories and kills them dead. It drives us insane. Really, it does (just ask my wife).

So, this year leave the warbling to the birds and just sing the song like it was written. It will be appreciated more than you know.

Thanks.

Boy, she’s awful generous when she’s spending other people’s money, isn’t she?

UPDATE: Here is the rebuttal from the public:

Ahh, but this is the left-coast. You just knew it wasn’t going to end there.

The Port of Seattle’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee (hereinafter “Dirtwads”) has decided that from now on, trees can be displayed at Christmas Time at the airport, but no specific religious decorations will be used to ensure that nobody gets offended.

Welcome to the port’s holiday forest.

There may be firs or hemlocks, spruces or pines at Sea-Tac Airport this holiday season, but there will not be a Christmas tree.

Not by definition, anyway.

Nor will menorahs or Buddhas be present.

So recommended the Port of Seattle’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee on Thursday.

“No specific religious symbols should be used,” recommended the committee, formed after the port was slammed internationally for yanking down — then reinstating — its airport’s nine Christmas trees last December.

In trying to craft holiday decorations that won’t offend or exclude anyone, the decorations committee — chaired by K + L Gates counsel Fredric Tausend — kept it neutral.

So, in an effort to cater to probably 0.0001% of the population, the Dirtwads have decided to offend the remaining 99.9999% of the population by removing Christmas decorations from the trees, and instead have a bunch of trees with no specific purpose or meaning displayed throughout the airport. Brilliant. Prevent offense by denying the existence of the holiday.

Port of Seattle Airport Division Managing Director Mark Reis said that just because a tree is permitted doesn’t mean it will be gussied up to look like Christmas.

“The very traditional single, iconic Christmas trees is not one of the areas we will be exploring,” Reis said. “There is the traditional, conical-shaped single tree — that the von Trapp family would have presents beneath and with balls and lights on it — versus something more natural and outdoors looking in a Northwest setting.”

I think these Dirtwads are afraid of Christmas Trees. I can’t really think of anything else to explain this. I thought the whole idea behind diversity, as preached by liberals, was to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. How does removing Christmas Trees from public display show tolerance? If anything, it shows intolerance of other religious beliefs.

Here’s an idea: instead of removing the Christmas Trees, what if the Dirtwads allowed the Jewish community to decorate their own display at the airport? Why is that so hard?

But rather than risk having multiple religions make requests for inclusion, the committee decided to aim for expressing the overarching principals — the “universal values” — at the heart of the religions whose holidays anchor the season.

Why is including more than one religion a risk? Isn’t having more than one religion practically the definition of diversity? Why dilute the meaning of the holiday to the point of no meaning at all?

So, instead of Christmas Trees next Christmas Season, folks at the Seattle airport will be treated to a “peace and harmony” fir tree, if in fact, they will allow a fir tree to be placed in the display at all.

How does any of this make sense?

It doesn’t! As usual, the liberals of the Northwest have taken a perfectly harmless tradition and loaded it down with so much crap that the only thing they can do is something incredibly stupid.

These people are in control of Congress. Think about that tonight when you go to bed.

HAT TIP: Michelle Malkin

So, be careful, be safe, and enjoy the holiday season. I’ll be here when you get back.

You see, H.E.B. has caved to the whiny pisstards of the “Politically Correct” element of society. At the start of this holiday Christmas season, one could browse the aisles while loading up the basket with the trappings of the season, all while enjoying the splendid Christmas music softly wafting down from the speakers above.

Well, until just a couple of days ago, that is.

It seems that some person, persons or entity unknown has prevailed upon H.E.B. to cancel the Christas music, as they had taken offense to those traditional tunes. Now, I don’t know where the complaint originated, but according to the H.E.B. employees I spoke with, it seems to have been elevated to a regional or corporate level, as the three H.E.B. stores I’ve visited in the past two days are bereft of cheerful, Christmas Melodies. Moreover, I’ve asked several people in other areas to check on this for me, and they’ve verified the same; if you want to hear some really lame ’50s surf tunes, just visit your local H.E.B. !!!

Anyone who lives in South Texas knows HEB. They’re practically the only grocer available, with the exception of the occasional Wal-Mart Super Store. They destroyed the competition from Kroger and Albertson’s by always having much lower prices and much better service. I have been shopping at the same HEB for close to twenty years and have almost nothing to complain about. However, this incident may change my habits.

I looked in vain on their web site to find an explanation for this, but the lack of anything in writing tells me that the company knows it is a poor decision. My guess is that they are hoping that no one will notice. Problem is, South Texas is a mostly Christian population, and we tend to notice the lack of Christmas music in places where we are accustomed to hearing it.

If you live near an HEB store, and agree that Christmas music should be wafting through the store as you spend your hard-earned dollars there, then please call their corporate headquarters in San Antonio at 800-432-3113 or 210-938-8357. Please be nice, but let them know in no uncertain terms that you are offended by their actions and that you want Christmas music to return to their stores.

If HEB were to have to rely on only their non-Christian customers for their livelihood, they would be out of business within a month.

2001 Edition: Earlier this week, President Clinton issued a formal White House proclamation celebrating the first day of Kwanzaa. His announcement began with some claptrap about preserving “what we value of our past,” and Kwanzaa being a “wonderful example” with its “focus on the values that have sustained African-Americans through the centuries.”

Except for the small historical detail that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 amidst the madness of the multicultural ’60s by a black radical stooge of the FBI, Ron Karenga, a.k.a. Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.

2005 Edition: President Bush’s 2005 Kwanzaa message began with the patently absurd statement: “African-Americans and people around the world reflect on African heritage during Kwanzaa.”

I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.

NOTE: This column was originally published in 2001, and was re-published in an updated form in December 2005. This is why I have quoted both sets of opening paragraphs.

Seems like a less-than-holy creation to me.

UPDATE: 01/03/2006 – I was remiss in not pointing out to readers the excellent posts by LaShawn Barber on Kwanzaa. My apologies to her.

Thank you very much for reading this blog this year. I hope to have more interesting things to write about and more liberal waste to remove next year. The way the Dems in the Senate are acting, I don’t think it will be hard to find that waste!

Finally, please remember those who are not able to be with their loved ones this Christmas, and those who will not share Christmas with family ever again. They give everything they have to guarantee the freedoms we all enjoy, and they deserve our respect, our support, and our eternal thanks.