Member-only story

The ‘Have Yourself a Dysfunctional Family Christmas’ Edition of Rate-A-Record

And right after you barely survived Thanksgiving

Paul Combs
4 min readDec 4, 2022
Few of us are the Cunninghams (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Thanksgiving is thankfully in the rearview mirror, but we are not out of the family gathering danger zone for another 21 days. It’s bad enough that by now you’ve already heard Mariah Carey’s version of “All I Want for Christmas is You” roughly 51,791,543 times; you also have to see Crazy Uncle Bob for the second time in less than a month. The combination of Mariah and Bob’s insistence that the Chinese are tracking your every move through a teenager’s viral TikTok video is enough to make the baby Jesus crawl out of his holy crib and strangle a shepherd.

But this isn’t a rant article; it’s the weekly edition of Rate-A-Record. It’s where we all listen to some tunes and rate them in the comments section using the odd scale of 35 to 98 first started by Dick Clark on American Bandstand and perfected by Santa’s Helper Terry Barr. It is also supposed to be a time of joy and love and good cheer, which means the songs should reflect that.

But this is me, and you know better.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that Christmas is for the kids and you stop really enjoying the season at around the age of seven. Prior to that point, you have no responsibilities…

--

--

Paul Combs
Paul Combs

Written by Paul Combs

Writer, bookseller, would-be roadie for the E Street Band. My ultimate goal is to make books as popular in Texas as high school football...it may take a while.

Responses (10)