I love Christmas.

Lots of people say that. But I am a full-on, all-in Christmas guy. It’s my favorite time of year. The celebrations. The joy and kindness and generosity the season brings out in people, if only for a short while. And most of all, the transcendent story of the birth of the Christ child—the marvelous, mysterious, miraculous reason for it all.

I even love Christmas music. I especially cherish the Christmas classics. Except…

There is that one song that leaves me bewildered, baffled, befuddled. I cannot fathom how it ever became a seasonal favorite.

I’m talking about the puzzling piece of work called “Little Drummer Boy.”

Plenty of people seem to like it, but you know what the song is saying, right? A poor urchin approaches the newborn baby, and happily suggests he’ll bang on a drum to honor the tiny king.

What…? Why…? How…?

Listen, if I’m Joseph and I’m responsible for the welfare of my exhausted wife and this divine child, I welcome the astonished shepherds from the fields and the wise Magi who journeyed to worship the newborn king. To any who would come and adore him, I’d say bring your lyre and lute, your harp and flute.

But the one instrument that I absolutely will not allow around this sleeping child is a drum. Well, also bagpipes. No bagpipes. And please don’t tell me there’s a carol called “Little Bagpipe Boy.”

Hey, I’ve really tried to give “Little Drummer Boy” a fair chance. I’ve sung it in choirs accompanied by a young boy with a snare drum. I once worked up a funk version for our church band that featured the drums. Many artists, from Bing Crosby to the Jackson 5 to Carrie Underwood to Pentatonix, have done their own renditions. But those were just efforts to make a stupid song tolerable. And they failed.

(I will grant you that the bizarre pairing of improbable neighbors Bing Crosby and David Bowie in the 1977 TV special Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas, with Bowie taking off on a descant arrangement of “Peace on Earth,” was the most amusing and listenable of all of them.) 

Surely there must be a backstory we’re not privy to—an obscure, apocryphal manuscript that causes the whole thing to make sense. Maybe Joseph and Mary were hep cats in the Galilean jazz scene. We know Jesus was a righteous dude. One of the wise men could have showed up with an upright bass strapped to his camel, ready to bebop like Charles Mingus. A shepherd hiding a tenor sax under his cloak, waiting to wail like Coltrane? Maybe a local lutist could riff like Joe Pass or Wes Montgomery. Of course, an angel could scat like Ella. Is it possible the drummer boy had assembled a happenin’ quintet and he was ready to lay down a groove like Gene Krupa or Stockton Helbing, all for the baby Jesus?

Sorry, but there’s no such colorful story.

The actual creation of “Little Drummer Boy” is quite mundane. A little research reveals that American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote the song in 1941. The story goes that Davis was trying to take a nap when this song leaped into her mind. It must have been a fever dream. She became obsessed with it.

See? This musical monstrosity even destroyed the sleep of the person credited with its creation! There’s no word about whether Davis gradually lost her mind and spent the rest of her days sleep-deprived and endlessly muttering, “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.” One wonders.

I have a solution that might bring a little sanity to the whole thing. Let’s just revise the lyrics a bit.

Second Verse
Child:
“Shall I play for you
Pa-rum-pum, pum-pum
On my drum?”

Third Verse
Mary:
“No.”
                                                          * * *

Is there a Christmas song that rubs you the wrong way? Tell me about it in the comments.