I accuse.
I accuse a cabal of Christmas Insiders, centered in the North Pole (dominated by Christmas mastermind Rudy the Red-Nosed Reindeer) of keeping out Middle-America’s Christmas heroes.
There is one certain way for artists, performers, or writers to achieve pop culture immortality.
Associate your work with Christmas.
Bing Crosby was a good crooner and a fine actor, but it was his wisdom in hooking up with Christmas that keeps his career alive. As long as “White Christmas” gets performed (and Christmas songs that make it into the canon are nearly immortal), Bing will live.
Imagine being the man who invented Rudolph . . . or Frosty . . . or the Little Drummer Boy a figure Dan Brown believes was intentionally left out of the Luke narrative by the Roman Catholic establishment.
You might be second-rate, but if you get your song or character into Christmas (especially secular Christmas), then second-rate is good enough.
Does popularity or being beloved help a character to make it into the Pantheon of Genuine Christmas heroes? Will you be immortalized in plastic as a lawn ornament to be worshiped for decades if mere grandmas think you are cute?
Do not be naive, gentle reader.
There is a conspiracy to keep the Good Christmas Heroes down.
There exists (oddly) a strange persecution of Christmas folk heroes.
Middle America may love a character, but if the Big City Keepers of Christmas send it from the North Pole (bought and paid for with their Big City Money), then it must go live in the land of Misfit Toys. There Dominick the Christmas Donkey lives with Olive the Other Reindeer. They could have been contenders. They were close, but the Christmas Establishment (plainly misogynist and anti-ass) forced them to the very fringes of the holiday.
The North Pole cabal, led by Rudy that Red Nosed Reindeer, is very effective at marginalizing characters. The best case is the beloved Socko the Snowball. A major hit for the Bell Sisters in the 1950’s, it was obvious that the Insiders were not going to give Socko a chance.
Complaints that even by Christmas standards Socko is pretty badly written are untenable when you recall that the most famous reindeer of all has a song with lines so bad as to invite parody. Rudolph’s ethically challenged friends flip flop in the song and “shouted out with glee.”
Glee?
Glee?
Socko was robbed.
Does anyone think that the wish that our “days be merry and bright and all our Christmas-es (?) be white” is Shakespeare?
Socko was not rejected because making a hero of a weapon is bizarre.
It was not due to the strange mingling of Socko with other numbers coming from the same duo like: “If’n” and “Honey Baby” and “I Am Teaching My Dolly to Pray.”
Who can fail to admire the courage of having the same singers do these numbers?
Las Vegas Blues (Strother)
Got those Las Vegas blues
Las Vegas!
Got those Las Vegas bluesMama say, Stay away from Las Vegas
Mama say, Run from Reno too
They call it fun in the sun
But I’m telling you hon
The snake eyes are bound to get youMama say, Them sevens look easy
Mama say, Them ‘levens do too
Though you come as you are
And you play with the stars
Still the boxcars are bound to get you
AND:
I’m Teaching My Dolly to Pray
I’m teaching my dolly to pray
Cause I heard my mommy once say …The world could be happy
If we had more prayers
I think it would help if
Little dolls could say theirsMy dolly says “mama” so sweetly
Some day she may help me pray
Bring my daddy home safely
From over the seaTo my mommy, my dolly and me
Thanks to the Elites we no longer get these artistically daring juxtapositions from the same vocalists.
And we no longer know the very name of Socko the Smallest Snowball.
Socko was rejected for maintaining Our Values against Big City and Elite Christmas snobbery.
Don’t believe me? Let us then turn to the Song Itself and glory in its lyrics:
You’ve all heard of Alice
In Wonderland
Well, we have a little story
We hope you’ll understand
The writer, who was allowed to produce music for the Christmas elites when he toed the Rudy line, bravely ties his piece to the classic sort-of-for-children’s story.
This bold move to educate the young is not even attempted in such corn as Rudolph.
Yet Rudolph made it and Socko did not!
Spike Jones was a-o.k. to the North Pole Big Shots when he merely wanted to keep his two front teeth for Christmas, but was a Misfit Writer when he tried to enter their august company with Socko.
“No, Mr. Jones” the Rudy the Reindeer faction said. “As long as you support us, we will allow you to write for us, but no Middle America Christmas characters need apply.”
Isn’t it obvious that this is a Conspiracy?
It’s about a little snowball
We met the other day
(He actually spoke to us!)
And this is what he had to say
The Socko Epiphany is little understood.
First, many skeptics ask when a snowball would have the chance (while hurtling through the air) to speak. Second, many Rudy-partisans ask if snowballs are particularly “heart warming” the way a snowman or reindeer is.
Bigots.
Do they ask how reindeer can fly?
Is it the roundness of Socko that bothers them? Does it remind them too much of the corn-fed profiles of Middle Americans like myself?
Socko spoke.
That is all we need to know.
I’m Socko the smallest snowball
But I never get a chance to play
What fun for the other snowballs
To be thrown back and forth all day
Here is as fine an expression of a Reagan-like peace through strength foreign policy as one is likely to read in a children’s song.
Socko wanted to hit other children, bad ones to be sure, like the other good snowballs. He knew he could inflict pain and suffering if handled by a Calvin looking for a Suzie.
He just needed a chance.
The kids all built a great big fort
With snowballs big and round
But when the battle finished
I was still there on the ground
Like an arrow left in the quiver, so was Socko on the day of battle.
Like most of us, Socko is not asking for welfare. He just wants a chance to knock the Elites from their perches of power.
Socko just wants a chance.
Oh, if they would only try me
I’m small but I’m so fully packed
I’m sure if I hit a window
That window would be all cracked
Here is why the Elites had to turn on Sock who expresses the populists rage of the masses. Socko dares to suggest to children that they use is fully packed dynamite self to strike out at the windows that keep them out in the cold. As the poor child stares longingly into the department store window, kept from all the toys inside, it is Socko who will bring the window that keeps them from those toys.
For thus daring to strike a blow at the smug men-in-grey-flannel suits conservatism of the Fifties, Socko had to be ignored.
His voice still lives however in the hearts of free men, women, and Christmas fictional characters everywhere. We will not be stilled.
Socko lives!
The sun will soon be here they say
And then I guess I’ll melt away
So please somebody come and play
With Socko the smallest snowball
Our hero, like Wallace after defeat or like Olive the Other Reindeer when she is ignored, feels th burden he carries. His life is so short and there are so many windows to break and plutocrats to torment.
He longs to pelt, but instead must melt.
Here is the moment of supreme agony, where Socko, in his own dark night of the snowball soul, comes close to giving up.
Let me ask you:
Who is on Socko’s side? Who will help him now?
Oh, how I wish that I could be
On top of some big hill
Then I would roll right off and start
To roll and roll until
I’d get so big that all the kids
Would point at me and stare
And say I was the biggest, biggest
Snowball anywhere
Many heroes, dear Socko, have felt this way.
But Churchill was no giant and Arthur was once a small boy . . . it is not the size of the snowball that matters, but how tightly packed his core is with ice.
Many a “big snowball” falls apart when flung at the neighbor’s head. It is all fluff and puffery.
Socko: you are all ice.
But, I’m, Socko the smallest snowball
And it seems I never have much fun
I’ll bet if somebody would throw me
I could make all the other kids run
What could be more expressive of the values of the Season than this warm hearted desire?
Make the other kids run, Socko!
Run, kids, run!
Socko is coming tonight . . .
One day a man chased all the kids
He was so big and fat
Oh how the children laughed
When I knocked off his big silk hat
Socko did not wait for one of us to wield him in his battle against corporate interests, plutocrats, and Big Business. As if one of David’s stones had been self-activating, Socko went after the glutton and brought joy to the children.
Soon the bad children will be running, because Socko has realized that he does not need them. They rejected him due to his size, but Socko is now self-activating Socko.
Now that he has learned to throw himself, his foes should be afraid.
Socko will find you.
Remember Socko: we always believed in you.
Oh, why must I be so little?
I wish I was real big instead
Then if they built a snowman
I might even be the head
Despite his triumph over the hatted FAT MAN (I myself am still laughing), Socko is still a prisoner to societal expectations. Snow, millions of commercials have told him, is for snowmen.
He has seen no media images extolling the snowball.
He looks at himself and can only see a small snowman head, not a tightly packed hat-doffing machine.
Like so many of us, Socko cannot see what he is for having been told who he is.
Like many great heroes, Socko has the humility of self-doubt.
We don’t need another Frosty, Socko.
We love you just the way you are.
With two big eyes
A great big smile
I’d make the kiddies
Laugh all the while
Socko: we don’t need another jolly Christmas character. Don’t make the kids laugh. Do what you were made to do- make those kiddies run.
Please somebody, give a trial
To Socko the smallest snowball.
It is with this plea to the Elite Christmas Characters that Socko closes his peon to the populace, this hymn to the common man.
This Christmas do not listen to the elite media approved “carols.” Turn instead to Socko the Smallest Snowball.
