John Lucas

The Christmas season is a time for second chances. After all, the entire idea of the holiday is to honour a guy who sacrificed himself so that humankind would have a path to choose that would spare us from God’s wrath.

And that’s good, because the last time Jehovah got really pissed off with humanity, he flooded the planet and drowned literally everyone except Noah and his immediate family. Jesus’s dad is known for a lot of things, but being merciful isn’t one of them.

In the forgiving spirit of the season, I have decided to give Lady Gaga’s “Christmas Tree” another shot. This is a song that I (despite having previously described it as “a filthy electro banger“) once called “the most heinous atrocity ever committed in the guise of holiday music“.

Lady Gaga has impressed me with plenty of her other songs since then, and I would go far as to describe her as a pop genius. So, surely, “Christmas Tree” deserves another listen, another opportunity to change my opinion of it?

Nope. I still hate it.

Since I can’t really justify dedicating this day of my countdown to a song I don’t actually like (and also because there’s no actual video for “Christmas Tree”), here’s Ron Sexsmith with “Maybe This Christmas”. Appropriately enough, the lyrics of this song are all about giving people second chances during the holidays.

And maybe forgiveness will ask us to call
Someone we love, someone we’ve lost
For reasons we can’t quite recall
Maybe this Christmas
Maybe there’ll be an open door

Thanks, Ron.