"This Christmas"

This is about the song, not the holiday. You know the song. The super whiny one about the guy whose girlfriend broke up with him last Christmas. Sadly, it was the first Christmas song I heard this year. It bugs me on many levels; hopefully writing them down will help me move on.

I guess first of all we need to clarify the narrative. Apparently the singer pledged his love for a girl the previous Christmas, and she didn’t immediately shoot him down. But the next day she told him that things weren’t going to work out. The singer was devastated. It’s unclear what happened over the course of the year, but when Christmas rolled around again, he pledged his love for someone else, then wrote a song to let the first girl know that he has moved on (and implying that she has missed out).

So here’s what’s lame:

1. “I gave you my heart.” So the singer thinks that by asking this girl out, he was giving her a gift. In reality, though, he was asking her for a favor. And doing this on a holiday was a bit manipulative, since saying no would presumably dampen whatever other festivities were going on. Just imagine the dejected look she’d have to deal with on what is supposed to be a happy day. (Now, I suppose it’s possible that the girl had been sending positive vibes and that he may have been legitimately convinced that she would consider his “heart” as a gift. But I think that interpretation is unlikely given the other issues here.)
2. The notion that the girl did something wrong by breaking up. If she wasn’t interested, she was under no obligation to continue the relationship. Of course the singer is justified in feeling disappointment, but this song goes beyond disappointment (as described below).
3. “To save me from tears” – So the singer asked another girl out to avoid tears? Shouldn’t the motivation behind a relationship be a little deeper than that?
4. “Someone special” – Obviously the singer considered the first girl to be special. So how is giving his heart to someone special different tactical choice now? This line is just a cheap insult to the first girl, but at the same time it paints the singer as pathetic. “You’re not special!” Who says that?
5. Speaking of how special the first girl really is to him, why is he bothering to write her a song when he just got a new girlfriend? Does this girl know that he’s still pining over the previous girl? Does the singer even like the new girl, or is this whole relationship just a vehicle to launch the before-mentioned cheap insult?
6. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that the song consists of the same two sentences repeated over and over.

Of the three people in the song, the new girl is the one I feel most sorry for. Fortunately, since this song comes on every year, I think we can safely assume that the singer gets shot down every year on December 26th, so the poor ladies involved don’t have to deal with him for too long.