:quality(70):focal(379x147:389x157)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/324WJP7W7HCTUWFHKZASIJV26A.jpg)
This happens every year. Every Christmas season. And I cannot shake it.
First, let me assure you my Christmas spirit is just fine, thank you. It will be even finer when my shopping is done. (Strange how stressful it can be, right? Buying gifts that should make others smile and feel happy and loved. I can hear my nieces and nephews now, Christmas morning, tearing open those envelopes and shouting to the crowded room: “Oh, look everyone, look how beautiful this gift card is. Oh, thank you. Thank you.” My heart is swelling already.)
Sorry. I wandered off. Back to my Christmas spirit, which has been haunting me, and I need to be rescued – from Christmas music.
Not all Christmas songs. Because how could Christmas spirits rise and sparkle without those carols in the air? I filled my living room with “Deck the Halls” and other favorites when I was decorating our tree. But ... here’s my dilemma. I have had one bouncy little song in my head for days. And it won’t go away.
Here it is, listen: “Have a hully gully Christmas ... ya da ya da da.” That’s it. I don’t recall most of the lyrics. Just that little intro and actor-singer Burl Ives is in my head singing it. Over and over. (Remember? He was the voice of Sam the Snowman in the NBC TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”)
But wait – it gets worse.
I checked out the lyrics. I read somewhere that one way to get song lyrics out of your head is to sing the whole song. Finish it and move on. But I found I’m not even mumbling the right words.
“Have a hully gully Christmas ...” Nope. Wrong. What Burl Ives was belting out was ... “Have a holly jolly Christmas. It’s the best time of the year. I don’t know if there’ll be snow, but have a cup of cheer.”
So I’m walking around with hully gully on the brain. I don’t even know what hully gully means. After more online searching I find hully gully refers to a folk game and a popular dance in the late ’60s. Even the Beach Boys sang about it.
“Well, there’s a dance spreading round like an awful disease.
Hully, hully gully.
You just shake your shoulders and you wiggle your knees.
Hully, hully gully.”
Well ... that was enlightening. My brain now has had enough hully and gully. But ... holly and jolly? Now that’s catchier, isn’t it?
“Have a holly jolly Christmas, and when you walk down the street, say hello to friends you know and everyone you meet.”
Yeah, catchy tune. Come on, hum a little with me now. Or ... maybe you’d prefer the carol listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling Christmas/holiday single in the United States and the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.
I can hear Bing Crosby singing it now ... “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.” White Christmas. Maybe hum those lyrics throughout your day.
“May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.”
Note I said your day. That was kind of my plan all along. To get these lyrics out of my head I thought I’d hand them off to you. To enjoy. Over and over. And over.
Let this be my holiday gift to you. The Christmas spirit in song. So ...
“Have a holly jolly Christmas, and in case you didn’t hear, oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year.”
• Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His PaperWork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.