by Much like egg nog, Claxton fruit cakes, and stampeding fellow shoppers to get the big screen TVs on Black Friday, the annual HNN Christmas song has become a beloved holiday tradition. Even if I’m the only one doing the beloving, this is the one column during the year that I can be reasonably sure I won’t be writing about yet another bankruptcy.
We led off in 2021 with, “The 12 Days of Christmas: A Supply Chain Lament,” which punctuated the end of Covid and with it all of that wonderful consumer demand for home furnishings. Ah, the good old days.
We followed up in 2023 with, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” an ironic twist on the Andy Williams favorite from 1963. Warehouses were flush, Covid’s many strains were in full retreat, and container prices had just stabilized. In short, there was much mistletoeing.
Last year, we marked the election year with, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Tariffs,” which proved to be prediction, warning, and just plain whining all rolled into one little ditty. (Is there any other kind of ditty?) So little, you might call it an itty bitty ditty. We also mourned the catastrophic damage Helena had done in September slamming into western North Carolina, a region that has proven most resilient.
Thus, we are slowly but surely composing a holiday songbook for our industry, and in only five or six more years, or if you prefer “six, seven,” provided I’m not either censored or deported, we will have stockpiled enough tunes to press a Christmas album. Why not? Neil Diamond has one, and he’s Jewish!
So, back by popular demand, I present another song adapted for maximum holiday spirit, furniture industry-style. And by “popular demand,” of course I mean that no one has actually asked for any of these songs. But, I’m a college professor on Christmas break trying to avoid having to help with the Season’s Greeting cards, so you’re getting another song.
For this year’s “instant classic,” which is both an anachronism and a prediction, we reach back to 1945. War time, just like now, sort of, when gas was 15 cents per gallon, a stamp cost 3 cents, and pennies cost, well, about a cent. Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers to break the color barrier. And, in one of this column’s many happy coincidences, “Sentimental Journey” by Les Brown and his orchestra reached the top of the singles charts.
Time for our own sentimental journey with this year’s selection, my all-time favorite Christmas tune, “A Christmas Song,” written by Mel Torme when he was just 19!, along with 22-year-old Bob Wells, of whom no one has ever heard. No surprise here, but my go-to version is Nat King Cole’s, so let his velvet voice provide the musical backdrop. It will soften the pain.
Ready? Sing with me now . . .
A one, a two, a three . . .
Containers bobbing on the open sea
Competitors nipping at your nose
Yuletide sales dropping pre-cip-it-ous-ly
Like selling AC to Eskimos
Everybody knows inflation and high interest rates
Help to make retail a fight
Bankruptcy attorneys with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight
They know more tariffs are on the way
Trump’s loaded lots of gold and goodies on his sleigh
And every mother’s child is gonna spy
To see if end-of-year sales really know how to fly!
And so, I’m offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two
Although it’s been said many times many ways;
“Merry Christmas to you.
For all of us at HNN, the happiest of holidays to you and to yours. May you enjoy a season filled with an abundance of joy, peace, and cookies right out of the oven. And may you find and share moments of laughter, love, and lasting memories. I’ll meet you back here on the other side of New Year’s, when together we can promise again to lose 10 pounds and detox from our devices. Time to fire up those gym memberships!
