Bah humbug!

This morning, KERA’s Courtney Collins got listeners around town to chime in on the holiday songs that irritate them most. Listen here.

Usually, we here at KERA are all sweetness and light. Or at least, even-keeled and polite. But as a special bonus, Think host Krys Boyd, Morning Edition host Sam Baker, and other staffers unleashed their inner scrooge on the songs that drive them crazy. Wanna hear em sound off?

(I was out of town when this was recorded, but Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” makes me want to burn holiday bows with a blowtorch.)

KERA News VP Rick Holter chose “The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey.” This holiday hokum was new to me.  Searching for it online yielded the video above. Who knew donkeys had their own holiday song genre?

Now if we could just get them to bray “Jingle Bells,” we may send Jerome completely over the edge.

Vote for which staffer’s song you hate most.  And tell us which holiday songs set you off.

• BJ Austin, reporter:  “Little Drummer Boy“; “The 12 Days of Christmas“

“… especially the FIVE GO-OLD RINGS.”

• Sam Baker, Morning Edition host: “The Christmas Song“

“It’s been recorded to death and nobody has brought anything new to that song since Nat Cole did it, what, 50 or 60 years ago.”

• Krys Boyd, Think host and managing editor:  “Santa Baby“

“[It] seems to fly in the face of all that is good and noble about Christmas, and about music.”

• Rick Holter, VP of News: “The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey“

“My gut reaction is “Little Drummer Boy.” But I was actually turned on to a song that’s even worse than that.”

• Lyndsay Knecht, news coordinator: “Blue Christmas” (by Tammy Wynette)

“Johnny Cash is convincing as someone who’s having a blue Christmas, but…”

• Jerome Weeks, reporter, Art and Seek: “Jingle Bells” (Singing Dogs version)

“It sounds exactly like my neighborhood at three in the morning.”

• Jeff Whittington, senior producer for Think and host of Anything You Ever Wanted To Know: All of them, when played early and often enough

“I’m always shocked that it’s already being played. And so really, I have no choice. I have to go home and put lights on the house.”

Reporter Bill Zeeble was so devoted to the assignment of choosing his least favorite holiday song that he actually wrote his own piece. He loathes it for its overt political correctness. Check out the lyrics to “It’s A Green Earth Christmas” below.

It’s A Green Earth Christmas

It’s a green earth Christmas

We wanna breathe, not wheeze.

We need pines and cold clean snow,

Not Nox that makes us sneeze.

I like Christmas greenery,

The non polluting kind,

Pure air, blue water and vegan stuff

It needs to be easy to find!

Stop the soot, and brown waterfalls, and rivers that flame at night,

Christmas should be safe and clean, for it we should not fight.

It’s our green-earth Christmas,

That’s all we ask for now,

Recycle, re-use, and don’t abuse

That which we’ve been endowed.