I’ve noted before that I’m not a big fan of Christmas music, and the stuff from that I do like tends to be of the more melancholy, wistful variety. The upbeat songs usually make me squirm, because their cheerfulness so often strikes me as synthetic and forced, if not downright hysterical — “Carol of the Bells” is a particular offender in the “hysteria” category; it always sounds to me like the performers are going to ram their bells down our throats if we don’t acknowledge their mantra of “merrymerrymerrymerrychristmas!” — and also because I simply don’t want to give into their shiny insistence that everything is holly-jolly-wonderful. So I was a little bit surprised at just how happy this old music video made me feel when I ran across it earlier, especially considering that I’ve been teetering at the edge of my annual funk for a couple of days:

Yes, I know this song — “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid, in case you don’t remember — and its American counterpart, “We Are the World,” are sappy and condescending toward the very people they were recorded to help, and we all got really damn tired of hearing them every five minutes (especially “We Are the World,” which at its peak was well-nigh inescapable). But I got a kick out of seeing the old clothing styles and trying to identify all the participants, and… well, hell, I’m not going to apologize for the fact that this little piece of ’80s claptrap made me feel better on a gloomy morning. Maybe it’ll do the same for someone out there…

Via Sullivan, who made me smile with his quip that, “George Michael’s hair always makes my yuletide gayer.”
For the record, I still miss my mullet.