Dec 8, 2015 3 min read

If I hear “Last Christmas” one more time, I am going to fly – or maybe even row – to England, find George Michael and beat him about the head. Unceasingly. I owe the world that much.

Michael, late of the English pop group Wham!, wrote this insipid yuletide ditty in 1984, when many denizens of our marshmallow world went to sleep with visions of sugarplums clad in parachute pants dancing in their heads. Maybe it was cute then. But after 31 years, cute – and parachute pants – don’t cut it.

Here’s one verse from the song:

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,

But the very next day you gave it away.

This year, to save me from tears,

I’ll give it to someone special.”

So, which warm yuletide sentiment is Michael trying convey?

A) You’re a hussy

B) I’m naive

C) I can’t write lyrics

D) All of the above

If you chose any answer but D, 50 lashes with a sprig of holly.

Somehow, I avoided hearing “Last Christmas” for more than three decades. But it snuck up behind me last year like a starving caribou that thought I had Purina Reindeer Chow in my back pocket, and it has been biting at my butt ever since.

It doesn’t help the program directors of Pittsburgh radio stations apparently think only 50 Christmas songs exist and have them played in rotations that seem to bring “Last Christmas” up once every 90 minutes. In fact, about the only thing that has taken my mind off “Last Christmas” is this year, for the first time, I heard Stevie Nicks bleat “Silent Night.” I say “bleat” rather than “sing” because I belong to a growing organization of hard-working, everyday people who think that, in a former life, Stevie was a goat.

I thought this long before “South Park” advanced the same theory by having U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan rescue a goat during a firefight because they thought it was Ms. Nicks on a USO tour. There’s even a Facebook group called “Stevie Nicks Sounds like a Goat.” Stevie released her version of the ancient carol in 1987. How I wish her “Night” had remained silent!

I’m sorry. Perhaps in this season of goodwill toward men, I should be more charitable. Perhaps I should allow that, at times, Stevie sounds more like Granny from the Tweety Bird cartoons.

Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said Stevie sounds like a goat or Granny and that I want to beat George Michael about the head. What I’d really like is to see George and Stevie in a Bellator MMA match to the death. Yea, verily … after a decade of 24/7 Christmas music starting a week before Thanksgiving, this match would warm such cockles as may be left in my heart.

OK. This time I really am sorry. To make amends for my Michael-Nicks diatribe, I offer a bit of good holiday-related news: Santa Claus did not die earlier this month, as published in the Aftenposten (Evening Standard) newspaper, of Norway.

According to the obituary, “Father Christmas” – born Dec. 12, 1788 – passed away Dec. 3 in Nordkapp, Norway’s northernmost point. No cause of death was listed, but the funeral was said to have taken place at the “North Pole Chapel.”

Aftenposten later printed an apology and removed the item from its website, saying it would investigate how the obituary had been allowed to appear.

Most likely it was placed by some long-suffering Norwegian who had heard “Last Christmas” one too many times.