“Gangsta rap” came along when I was a young teen. Everything changed! There were cusses everywhere, especially this word “ho” that I repeated blithely until it occurred to me that it had nothing to do with Santa’s merriment. At first, I mocked the people who criticized this new, very popular, very open misogyny. Sometime around college, however, I realized that I was both enchanted by the music and deeply troubled by a lot of its content.

At that point, I realized rap music at large wasn’t talking to me: I was not the target audience. The self-aggrandizing lyrics, swagger and casual violence towards women were meant to invite the (male) listener to join a fellowship of powerful, desirable male peers — and to exclude me.

So why was I still listening? Why do I still listen to rap music, even now? Well, I’m not unaccustomed to being “othered” by the media I love.

Even the earliest books I read contained hints that I was not their target audience. Several Oz books contain references to Hottentots (renamed “Tottenhots” because that is clever), complete with unflattering illustrations:

Tottenhot! Get it?

In case we were confused about Baum’s feelings concerning the “Tottenhot,” this particular image illustrates a storyline in which Glinda the Witch has to put an animal through a succession of transformations, each time bringing him closer to humanity. “Tottenhot” is two transformations removed from a human being.

I definitely remember having seen these images, decades later; they have since been expurgated from more recent editions, causing something of a controversy in the “Oz community.” (You can see the other scanned pages at the link.)

Meanwhile, the author who continued the Oz series after Baum’s death, Ruth Plumly Thompson, added a popular character, Jinnicky, the Red Jinn, to the stories. Jinnicky  is served by a cast of chubby black slaves. At one point, a rebellion among the Red Jinn’s slaves is actually suppressed by Princess Ozma.

And then there was the first time of many I read through Little Town on the Prairie and fetched up against the charcoal drawing of Pa Ingalls and three friends in blackface (Wilder refers to them as “darkies”). Again, I remember this cognitive dissonance. I didn’t ask an adult what was going on; I didn’t even know what blackface was. I only knew that there was something creepy about Pa dusting his face with soot and speaking in a fake black vernacular.
Once I moved on to my ten-year Sherlock Holmes obsession, I learned pretty quickly to avoid the latter-day mystery  “The Three Gables”:

The door had flown open and a huge negro had burst into the room. He would have been a comic figure if he had not been terrific, for he was dressed in a very loud gray check suit with a flowing salmon-coloured tie. His broad face and flattened nose were thrust forward, as his sullen dark eyes, with a smouldering gleam of malice in them, turned from one of us to the other.

“Which of you gen’l'men is Masser Holmes?” he asked.

Holmes raised his pipe with a languid smile.

“Oh! it’s you, is it?” said our visitor, coming with an unpleasant, stealthy step round the angle of the table. “See here, Masser Holmes, you keep your hands out of other folks’ business. Leave folks to manage their own affairs. Got that, Masser Holmes?”

“Keep on talking,” said Holmes. “It’s fine.”

“Oh! it’s fine, is it?” growled the savage. “It won’t be so damn fine if I have to trim you up a bit. I’ve handled your kind before now, and they didn’t look fine when I was through with them. Look at that, Masser Holmes!”

He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend’s nose. Holmes examined it closely with an air of great interest.

“Were you born so?” he asked. “Or did it come by degrees?”

It’s actually really hard for me to read this quote, given how many of my junior high school daydreams took part in the Victorian London Holmes inhabited. Now, let’s be honest: that world was not racially inclusive. There are plenty of other racist assumptions in the Holmes canon — the Welsh are dark and emotional, the Southern Europeans border on hysteria both comic and murderous, Indians are invariably shady and the poor are either noble or felonious.

I suppose it’s that the black buffoon Doyle serves up is alarmingly similar to the sort of Stepin Fetchery that’s still on offer today — and still just as offensive. I knew, by the age of eleven or twelve, that I was supposed to be offended by that. Instead, I remember feeling ashamed. I wonder if the shame stemmed from this proof I was unworthy of participating in my Victorian fantasy?

I can’t answer that honestly from an adult perspective. All I know is that, despite knowing most Holmes stories practically by heart, I could not tell you what happens in The Three Gables if you put a gun to my head; one of my favorite Holmes stories was “The Yellow Face,” in which the truth about an interracial marriage comes out, without negative consequences; and that for some reason I have spent the last thirteen months building a Victorian alternate universe in which people of all hues mix pretty freely. Hmm!

The point of all these sad little vignettes, I suppose, is to prove that I’m well accustomed to the point at which an author waves me aside, saying, in effect, “I’m not talking to you.” I rail against it, but I can’t say it never happens, even today. However, I can’t just stop reading books, or only reading the books that make me feel great about myself. Some of the best and most important books were and are written by people with really backwards notions of race and gender. That doesn’t discount the fact that these books are good or important.

In the same vein, when rap is good, it’s very good. For every time Kanye West rails against gold-digging baby mamas

18 years, 18 years/ and on the 18th birthday he found out it wasn’t his

he also produces something like the last verse of “Gone,” perhaps my favorite set of Kanye rhymes –

What the summer of the Chi got to offer a 18-year-old/sell drugs or get a job, you gotta play your role/my dog worked at Taco Bell, hooked us up plural/fired a week later, the manager countin’ churros/sometimes I can’t believe it when I look up in the mirro’/how we out in Europe, spendin’ Euros

Kanye rapping ridiculous pop culture things (churros) with real-world things (Euros) never fails to make me smile.

Of course I’m against misogyny in music, of course I constantly question the relationship between the misogyny of rap music and the culture of violent sexism among young people. (I also am against the use of the word “Hottentot” outside a critical discussion of the media’s obsession with Black women’s bodies!) But I’m not going to stop listening to all rap music, any more than I’m going to torch my Oz books.

I avoid music that is actively vile, just as I avoid books that are consciously attempting to be racist. I try to find mainstream rappers who are doing something a little different from the norm, whether musically or lyrically. (Yes, Mos Def, I know, thanks. :) I get excited when a new female MC appears, then get disappointed when, almost inevitably, everyone loses interest in the “novelty.”

I wince, when an otherwise fantastic rapper describes his coterie of willing groupies in the same verse in which he enumerates his other possessions, because I know he’s talking over my head to the men in the room. But I keep listening.

Christmas Eve, my grandfather might light a fire in the fireplace (or we might watch the weird burning-log show on KOFY TV 20) and, one way or another, Nat “King” Cole would sing The Christmas Song. We would run around frantically, hopped up on candy, until someone made us go to bed, then wake up far earlier than we ever would normally to demolish the stacks of gifts.

My house, come December, never smells like faulty old electric lights singeing a pine tree, minty candy canes, or egg nog. I miss the Christmas tree, but I don’t miss Christmas music, for the simple reason that I cue my favorite Christmas songs every Christmas. Most of the ones that follow are old favorites I grew up with — and thus my grandmother’s favorites — with a few newcomers. I play these every year and remember being very small and very happy.

10. Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton — Baby It’s Cold Outside

Yes, everyone plays this song, but the interplay — recorded live — between Louis and Velma is hilarious. Christmas is all about double entendres and drinking too much anyway.

9. Diana Ross & The Supremes — Silver Bells

Diana and I have had our ups and downs, but Silver Bells is pretty and you can forgive her for ruining the Supremes, it’s Christmas.

8. Stevie Wonder — Ave Maria

While you are marveling at Stevie Wonder being a musical genius and stuff, it is easy to forget how pretty his voice is. He’s only seventeen here, and the gentle, quiet arrangement lets you hear all the youth in his voice. No one ever said Berry Gordy did not know how to produce a song.

7. James Brown — Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto

My grandmother always kind of disliked James Brown, because she was all about phrasing and sometimes you just have no idea what JB is even saying. Here, however, he makes it plain: he has marching orders for Santa Claus. “Hitch up your reindeer, UNGH! Go straight to the ghetto.” How could Santa refuse, when the request is so very funky?

6. B.B. King — Merry Christmas Baby

Everyone swears this was my grandmother’s favorite Christmas recording. It’s at least one of them. I love blues-inflected Christmas, because is there really a more potentially depressing time of year besides maybe mid-January in Duluth? This is a happy blues song, though. For once, a bluesman’s baby is treating him right.

5. Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You

How did this get here? Wow, must be a typo, sorry.

(My only defense is this: to get Mariah, you had to be there, before the polyester short shorts, before Nick Cannon, before Glitter, before Hello Kitty. In 1990 I was twelve years old. Mariah Carey’s debut album was on the Billboard 200 for 113 weeks. You do the math. There are more of us than there are of you. We will destroy you with our dog-whistle arias. Merry Christmas!)

4. The Jackson 5 — Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

If there’s anything inadvertently depressing about this exuberant Christmas carol, it’s how sad Michael probably was while he was recording the lead. You can imagine Joe Jackson standing, menacing, outside the recording booth while his boys captured the excitement of waiting for Christmas. Sigh.

3. Charles Brown — Please Come Home For Christmas

A lot of people think this is called “Bells Will Be Ringing,” because those are the lyrics that open this R&B lament. I don’t know very much about Charles Brown, but I hate everyone else’s cover of this song, including Bon Jovi’s and even Aaron Neville’s but especially The Eagles’. No one else sounds convincingly sad-sack. (No one believes Jon Bon Jovi has ever been alone for Christmas.)

2. Lou Rawls — Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

This is so close to being my favorite Christmas song. Lou Rawls sings with such wry humor even when he is sad, and he is not sad here. He’s backed by a smooth big band, and the message is clear: it’s time to have yourself an extremely swingin’ Christmas. It’s best to do as Lou advises.

1. Nat “King” Cole — The Christmas Song

This is not exactly a deep cut. But it is the Christmas song. No one even comes close to matching Nat on this — it’s arguably his signature song. It’s bittersweet and his baritone is perfect and it can either make you warm with fuzzy memories or bawl, depending on what kind of holidays you’re having. I believe this was my grandmother’s favorite Christmas song, because it has been mine since I was tiny, and where else would I have gotten the idea?

Here’s Nat singing live on his show (I think), a version you don’t usually hear.

Have a swingin’ Christmas, y’all. Chag Sameach!

Part of it, I know, is merely old age: when I was a child, every Wham! “Last Christmas” or NKOTB “Funky Christmas” brought me closer to an obscene quantity of disposable plastic toys. By the time my grandparents started playing decent Christmas music on Christmas Eve, my sister and I were in a Mattel-stoked frenzy, one step away from an infant Altamont.

These days, however, Hanukkah tends to show up weeks before actual Christmas, so after I have disappointed my children with eight nights of beautiful handcrafted wooden toys, educational books, and afterschool lessons, and permitted my husband to make the obligatory epic kitchen-destroying latke dinner, we still have up to a month of Sisqo’s “Perfect Christmas” to go.

A month is a long time.

The heart of the problem, of course, is that every single human who has ever entered a recording studio has laid down at least one Christmas track. Matisyahu probably has a cover of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer (available only on mixtape, obvs). And, according to the best available empirical evidence, at least 99.2% of these songs are objectively terrible (you cannot argue with science). There are certain songs, even among this crowd of terrible music, that make me cringe, sprinting for the door of Bath & Body Works with the complete Mangosteen Cloud Aromatherapy Set still in my basket, swerving my 1998 Nissan Maxima across several lanes of traffic in an effort to turn the radio station.

These are the Four Worst Christmas Songs.

They are not obscure songs. No, they are popular, classic songs that play without cease during the holiday season. They are everywhere: in the gym, at the dentist’s, lodged deep in my damaged brain. And they are all very bad, each in its own way.

4. Jackson 5 – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Worst lyric: “I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus / underneath his beard so snowy white.”

The Jackson 5 are among my very favorite groups. It is not their fault that “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is a sad song, sung in the most upbeat manner possible, in which a child discovers that his mother is carrying on a torrid and illicit extramarital affair with Father Christmas.

But it is. And knowing what we know about Joe, the Jackson paterfamilias – and the fact that, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jacksons weren’t even allowed to celebrate Christmas (so what on earth was their mother doing with Santa?) — only makes the song sadder.

3. Michael Bolton – “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”

Worst lyric: anything that Michael Bolton is “singing”

Admittedly, criticizing any Michael Bolton song is shooting 1992 Christmas fish in a 2009 holiday barrel. But part of the reason Christmas music, as a group, is so horrible is that people feel the need to play Every Single Available Christmas Track in an effort not to be repetitive. This leads to a long, long playlist of predictably horrible music, and the inevitable Michael Bolton Christmas carol.

Ironically, the Jackson 5 cover of this song — upbeat and imbued with the genuine excitement small children feel for the approach of Santa Claus — is among my favorite Christmas covers.

This particular song hits all the Michael Bolton bullet points — unnecessary grit and grinding on the very lightest possible subject matter; cringeworthy faux soul; inducing a rage stroke in the endless checkout line at Michael’s — within an internally consistent framework of general suckitude.

2. Paul McCartney: “Wonderful Christmas Time”

Worst lyric: “Simply having a wonderful Christmastime / Simply having a wonderful Christmastime.”

This song’s thesis statement is as follows: “we are sitting around together, not doing much, just having a pretty decent Christmas. Repeat.” Okay, Paul. I know your highs are very high highs, but really?

I remember the very first time I heard this song. It was a VH1 Pop-Up Video Christmas-themed episode. My face looked exactly like this:  (O_0) . Now when I hear the song my face looks exactly like this  (>_<) .

This song represents what it must have been like to be John Lennon in 1967, trying to keep Paul the hell out of A Day In The Life. This song is Manic to John’s Depression. If I could leave with Yoko Ono, I would, too.

1. Eartha Kitt – “Santa Baby”

“Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing, a ring /I don’t mean a phone”

The recently departed Eartha Kitt was awesome for a million reasons I will not list here. This song is not awesome, and I hear it more than any other bad Christmas song, year after year.

This song is, as far as I can tell, sung from the perspective of a gold-digger to her sugar daddy, except the gold digger is Eartha Kitt and the sugar daddy is…Santa? (What is with the prevalence of women having relations with Santa Claus on or around Christmas? I thought he was married.) The song oozes with promised sexual returns to any bearded jolly-belly rich enough to shimmy down the chimney with a yacht and some diamonds.

It is a great song to play for your daughter.

I mean, she can’t expect to get that Easy-Bake Oven without putting out a little.