Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Santa Baby

I grew up listening to the A Very Special Christmas c.d. over and over again around the holidays. Just seeing the cover of this gets me excited!


This c.d. is long gone now, though. Gone to wherever lost c.d.'s and dvd's go in our family - to a neighbor, in the basement somewhere, out of a moving car window... whathaveyou. I just downloaded it again on iTunes though. Thanks Steve Jobs.

Back in the day, my sister and I would dance like white girls to Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" (I still know every word by heart... doy...). My mom's favorite was "Merry Christmas Baby" by Bruce Springsteen, for obvious reasons, and we would always roll our eyes and say, "Daaaaaad.... that's so weird...." when he would louldy sing "Walkin' Round in Women's Underwear...." instead of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" with Annie Lennox. Typical Ritchey shenanigans.

This c.d. brought me so much joy as a child, but also lead to so much confusion. In Maddona's version of "Santa Baby" (the best version, in my book) she sings, "Santa baby, slip the sable under the tree, for me". At one point in my childhood my dad drove a mint-green Mercury Sable, similar to this beauty:


so in my head, when Madonna crooned "slip the sable under the tree" I imagined that she wanted a Mercury under her tree. "How neat," I thought, "Madonna wants the same car my old man has!"

Several years later when I heard the original version by Eartha Kitt, I thought, "Damn they had Sables back then?"

It wasn't until my early twenties that I realized that a sable is also a luxurious fur. Which makes more sense for Eartha and Madonna to want under their tree than an American made automobile (although they both ask for convertibles, too... that's my justification).

It's this and so many other things similar to it that lead me to believe that I need to be tested for a mental disability.

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