Christmas songs advent calendar Day 5
'It’s Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas’ by Half Man Half Biscuit
“See how we yawn
At your bile and your scorn
It’s a beautiful day
Peace on Earth has been played
Make a noise with your toys
And ignore the killjoys
‘Cos it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas”
Yesterday I promised that today’s song would be a bit lighter and I hope that this offering from Half Man Half Biscuit will hit the mark. I love this song because HMHB use their trademark cynical wit to undermine cynicism. It’s a strange way to approach a Christmas song but the negation of negation works surprisingly well. It puts me in mind of Sylvia Plath’s lines, “Only the devil can eat the devil out” although that will just make you think that I’m a pretentious dick (which happens to be true). Anyway, ‘It’s Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas’ proves that Christmas songs don’t have to express a childlike naivety in order to capture the Christmas spirit well. It’s a very unusual Christmas song but it still manages to exude a warm and generous mood.
I’ll be adding these songs to a Spotify playlist, ‘Christmas songs advent calendar 2024’.