THE CLASSIC CHRISTMAS NOVELTY SONG: “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,
My two front teeth, see my two front teeth.
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth,
Then I could wish you ‘Merry Christmas.’”
Donald Gardner (1913-2004)
American music teacher and songwriter
The chorus of his song “All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)”
Gardner wrote the song in 1944, when he was a music teacher at the Smithtown, New York, elementary school. It was first recorded and made famous by Spike Jones and His City Slickers in 1948. There are two similar but slightly different stories about the origin of the song. One story quotes Gardner as saying he heard some kids telling their teacher what they wanted for Christmas that year and noticed they “were all using the same phrase, ‘All I want for Christmas.’” Then, recalled Gardner, “the teacher said something funny and they all laughed, and I noticed that 16 of the 22 in the class were missing their front teeth.” According to another version, Gardner had asked the class of 22 second grade students to help him create a Christmas song by telling him how they would complete the sentence, “All I want for Christmas is...” As they answered, he noticed that 16 of them had noticeable lisps due to missing front teeth.
After Gardner wrote the song, his students performed it at the school’s annual Christmas pageant. A local woman who worked for the Witmark music publishing company heard it and told her boss. He liked the song and Witmark published sheet music for it, but it wasn’t recorded until 1948. That year, it was recorded for the first time by Spike Jones and his group, with band member George Rock singing it in a falsetto child’s voice with a whistling lisp. Their recording was released on December 6, 1948 and soon hit #1 on several Billboard music charts. It went on to become a modern Christmas classic. |
THE MARIAH CAREY DIS-MAS QUOTE: “All I want for Christmas, Mariah, is you to stop performing for dictators.”
Alexandra Petri
Writer of the satirical ComPost blog on the Washington Post site
Petri used the line above (a takeoff on Carey's popular Christmas song “All I want for Christmas is You”) in the headline of a post about critics of the singer’s apparent willingness to perform paid gigs for dictators. As Petri noted, Carey did a paid performance for Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi Gaddafi in 2011, for a fee of $1 million. Recently, for another million dollar fee, Carey performed at an event in Angola that was attended by Jose Eduardo dos Santos, another controversial authoritarian who has held the reins in that country for 33 years.
(At left, Mariah Carey poses with Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos.) |
THE JEWISH CHRISTMAS WISH VERSION: “Of my choices for St. Nick
Seinfeld, Zach Braff and Jon Stewart
Are the boys with a big schtick.
‘Cause I just want them here tonight
Holding on to me so tight
I’ll take Zac Efron too
All I want for Christmas is Jews.”
The HOT BOX comedy troupe’s parody song “All I Want For Christmas is...Jews” |
THE GUN-TOTIN’ TODDLERS VERSION: “All I want for Christmas is an AR-15 with an attached grenade launcher...huh? Wait a sec, that’s not how the song goes! Or is it?…At the Scottsdale Gun Club in Arizona, kids (and adults) can get their pictures snapped with Santa and an automatic weapon of their choice – or several automatic weapons of their choice. So much for a Silent Night.”
Jacqueline Burt
American magazine writer, book author and blogger
In a post in her column on The Stir website |
THE SHAUN WHITE NUDE PICS VERSION: “All I want for Christmas is for naked pictures of Shaun White to stay unpurchased and unpublished.”
Richard Langford
Columnist for the Bleacher Report website
His comment in an article about TMZ’s revelation that X-rated photos of professional snowboarder and skateboarder White having sex with a female fan were being shopped around to the highest bidder |
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Everything Else from QuoteCounterquote.com!
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