Bad Poetry Monday

Embarrassing Typos Found In Christmas Sheet Music

Good Monday morn all you Cool Cats and Hot Kittens. Today’s selection is not a poem, per se, as nothing rhymes or concerns itself with histrionics, deep symbolism, faux affectionism, or poignancy. Plus, it lacks any pretense of a narrative soul. It’s more of a list—a rare list of Christmas sheet music.

This rarity was discovered in a old wooden chest recently found tucked deep in a closet in a historic brick building that used to house song writers in what was famously known as Tin Pan Alley, on West 28th between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York City.

In the early 1900s, Tin Pan Alley was the epicenter of the American songwriting and song publishing industry. One of the most prolific and venerated writers to come out of there was Irving Berlin (1888-1989) who, in 1942, penned White Christmas, one of the most recorded songs in history. Many other famous Christmas songs followed by Berlin and other writers and composers.

Historians suspect the yellowed and rust-stained pieces of sheet music discovered in the wooden chest was left there to avoid embarrassment and were probably long forgotten by its owner or owners. It appears these music sheets were accidentally published with typos in their titles that, if read by the public, would surely result in a national fit of laughter unbecoming to the seriousness of some of these favorite seasonal songs.

In those early days, typesetters would choose letters from a wooden box that held letters of the alphabet or symbols and place the movable type on a composing stick, which when placed into a printing press and inked on paper, produced a readable form of print. All it would have taken is for the typsetter to pick up the wrong letter, or the wrong letter closest to the correct letter, to change the song title’s meaning completely.

These historians, who wish to remain anonymous, have given me permission to release these printed errors for public consumption. You are seeing them here first on Bad Poetry Monday. They follow in no particular order:

Embarrassing Typos Found in Christmas Sheet Music

by ZJ Czupor

1. Have Yourself a Messy Little Christmas

2. Ate Days of Christmas

3. All I Pant for Christmas is You

4. I’ll Be Hung for Christmas

5. The Christmas Bong

6. Let it Blow

7. Slough Ride

8. Solvent Night

9. O Come, All Ye Fitful

10. I Saw Mommy Hissing Santa Claus

11. Do You Lear What I Rear?

12. Feline Navy Dad

13. Jungle Bell Rick

14. Little Saint Hick

15. Away With a Manager

16. Jog to the World

17. Hard Cindy Christmas

18. Horry Jelly Christmas

19. Blur Christmas

20. Whine Christmas

21. Wonder Winterland

22. Hark! The Harold Sings Angles

23. Duck the Halls

24. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Racoon

25. It’s the Moist Wonderful Time of the Year

Editor’s Note: All of the above titles are a work of fiction and products of this author’s warped imagination. However, the references to Tin Pan Alley and Irving Berlin are factual.

May all your days be merry and bright—and free from embarassing typogiraffecal aires. That “merry and bright” line is from Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, (Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane, 1943).