FLEAS NAVIDAD

FLEAS NAVIDAD

 

       I’ve just about had it with the radio stations and store speakers and cell phone ringtones playing “Feliz Navidad” again and again as an obligatory nod to Hispanic culture. Other than making composer Jose Feliciano wealthy, it does little to enrich the holiday season. This is a case where you wish the phrase “over and over” had more “over” in it and less “and.” There must be dozens, hundreds, of things sung and played in Latin America around Christmas that we ought to be hearing instead.

       But since “Feliz” has become a Christmas standard, we should honor it in the time-honored way: by creating alternative words for the melody. As with “Jingle Bells,” which in your local elementary school has the lyrics “Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg/ Batmobile lost a wheel and Joker got away-hey!” There’s another that goes “Hark the herald angels shout/ Two more days and we’ll be out./ Two more days and we’ll be free,”/ Free from all this misery./ So grab your ball and grab your chain/ And run like hell to catch the train./ Hark the herald angels shout,/ Two more days and we’ll be out!” And there’s one that I dedicate, in this Year of Our Fear 2009, to the terrorist whose airline explosive didn’t work: “We three kings of Orient Are/ Tried to light a loaded cigar./” BANG! “We two kings of Orient Are/ Tried to light a loaded cigar.”/ BANG! “I the king of Orient Are/ Tried to light a loaded cigar.” BANG! “God rest ye merry gentlemen.” And so on.

       In this spirit, I offer the following:

 

                     Fleas Navidad

 

There are fleas on the dog

There are fleas on the dog

So many fleas on the dog

That some are jumping off

There are fleas on the dog.

 

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

With fleas on the dog.

 

There are fleas on the cat

There are fleas on the cat

They wanted a home

And they started to roam

Now there’s fleas on the cat

 

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

It’s going to be a hairy Christmas

There are fleas on the cat

 

There are fleas everywhere

There are fleas everywhere

On the floor, on the stairs,

In ones and in pairs

There are fleas everywhere.

 

It’s going to be a weary Christmas

It’s going to be a weary Christmas

It’s going to be a weary Christmas

With fleas everywhere.

 

       Just for the record, for Irene’s sake: we have no dogs, no cats, and no fleas at our house. Just the usual inanity over the airwaves.