A very non-PC Christas parody?

August 2, 2007 9:13 AM

Help me sort out a vague memory of a tasteless Christmas song.

Every year my elementary school in the mid 80s (a Catholic school) did a Christmas pageant. One year, I swear I'm not misremembering this, I have a vague memory of doing a really tasteless and at least slightly racist "Christmas around the World" song which was sung to the tune of Jingle Bells, which included a line something like "Shlimp Flied Lice and Egg Foo Young." But I don't remember any of the rest of it. Does anybody have any idea what song I'm talking about? It was definitely something that was published professionally, because I remember it being printed on a well designed page with racially stereo-typed cartoons of kids from around the world and everything.

posted by empath to media & arts (2 comments total)

Don't have an answer for you but my brother, a MeFi lurker, also sang this in his Jr. High chorus back around 1980.

From him:

The song started off with "Ching Go Pow, Ching Go Pow", to the tune of Jingle Bells.
posted by bondcliff at 10:18 AM on August 2, 2007

Oh yeah, we sang that in elementary school too. Probably 1988 or so. We even performed it at a mall at Christmas time as part of a field trip.

I remember part of it was pseudo-German, as in "yingle pell, yingle pell, yingle all der vey / acht vat fun it ist to ride in und von horse open sleigh."

And there definitely had "shlimp flied lice" and "almond cookie" lines as well.

How we were allowed to sing that in public I'll never know. I guess it was Arkansas and no one cared about offending non-crackers.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 3:47 PM on August 2, 2007