Buttkickin’ Holiday Songs: “Mele Kalikimaka” — Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters (1950)

 Well that magical feel-good time of the year is upon us, my friends! A bit of frost in the air, a touch of snow on the ground, burning leaves and hot apple cider and molassess cookies and… no wait, I live in South Florida. It’s hot, muggy, rainy, and even our ginormous flying cockroaches are armed to the teeth. Still, that does not deter us here at HokeyCo Industries Ltd. from our annual December tradition — our ongoing curated list of Buttkickin’ Holiday Songs! We’ll celebrate any old holiday here, be it Christmas, C/Hanukah, Yule, Eid al-Fitr, Festivus, Black Christmas, WHATEVER. We take no offense here. We make much offense here. It’s a give-and-take sort of thing…

Moving on… we’re not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel with our first song of the season, the inimitable Mele Kalikimaka, sung by Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters. You’ve heard it in countless movies, on radio, on compilation albums everywhere, and it’s about as omnipresent at Christmastime as tent cities around big box stores weeks before Black Friday (seriously you people — go to work; by not being lifeless dopes, you’ll earn countless more being productive than you could ever dream of saving on that still-overpriced crap you can’t afford and don’t need to buy for people you don’t like). Bing’s warm baritone combined with the Andrews Sisters’ exquisite harmonies is like sweet butter and honey spread on warm toast.

Plus you got the Hawaii connection, right? As a South Floridian, I can relate. We might not have a winter wonderland down here, but that doesn’t stop us from getting all festive. By the pool or on the beach maybe, but you get the gist of things.

So crank it up, sway convincingly, spread some good cheer and by all means, please — pass the poi, please!

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