Entre le bœuf et l'âne gris

Christmas Xmas is in the air- The "Holidays" are approaching... Don't be offended... It's around this time of year that we start to sing a lot of the same hymns and carols- Which is great, they're great. But sometimes you'll be standing there, in the church, and suddenly everything goes quiet... What just happened? You look closer at your hymnal and realize that all at once, the entire congregation got confused on whether or not they were allowed to say, "Ass." (And don't even get me started on hymns that mention bosoms...)

There are two really popular hymns in particular where, every year, if you listen closely, you can hear it happen every. Single. Time. The easiest one to get away with is, "Good Christian Friends Rejoice"- The tempo is fast enough that you can just kind mumble through it and half ass it.

Speaking of half assing it, whoever wrote the Little Drummer Boy (In the ancient year of 1941) took the initiative and wussed out BEFORE everyone else by replacing ass with lamb. That gets a JAM certification of: "Lame!"

 

But then there are slow hymns like, "What Child is This", and the line always ends up going something like

 Situations like this call for unquestioning bravery and an absolute refusal to half-ass. You just have to go forward and sing the line without hesitation. And then laugh at everyone else as they stumble along it. That's the only way to sing Christmas Hymns.

 

There are some other, more obscure hymns that do this too, such as the French "Entre le bœuf et l'âne gris" or "Between the Ox and the Gray Ass", which sounds like their version of between a rock and a hard place. But at least the French know that gray is a distinct color from blue!

And then there's the oddly suggestive "In the Bleak Midwinter", which deserves quite a bit of attention.

What exactly is going on here?

 

I don't even know what to say to explain just how awkward this hymn is. The one-two punch (Teaching children how to count and punch people at the same time, both very valuable skills) of weirdness from this verse alone is just staggering... I'm very glad it doesn't get sung a lot. There's only one other Christmas carol I can think of that's more awkward than this one, (In the Ending of The Year) but it's literally too explicit to talk about on the JAM. (But it is hilarious) The JAM is a semi-family friendly blog, after all. (Which means it's friendly to the families of truckers)

 

And there ya go. Tune in next time when we fulfill our Blogal Duties by having an obligatory post about how consumeristic Christmas is these days. But right now I have to go out and get all my Christmas shopping done.

 

Anyway, I leave you with this deleted scene from the Nativity, featuring the amazing Spider Manger: