It occurred to me the other day as I was singing along to an old version of Deck the Halls that "fa-la-la-la-la" is a very ridiculous thing to say. Or sing! Why FA-la-la-la-la? Why not LA-la-la-la-la? Weird.
My first memory of this carol is from Caravan, the church scouting group my brother and I belonged to through grade school. I remember being lined up against the concrete brick wall in the basement of the church, attempting to keep up with the odd language of this song under the direction of the Very Scary Ernie LaBelle. (I'm sure I had no real reason to be afraid of this man; it's just part of my memory. Keep up.) It was one of those deals where the majority of the song was held together by a few adults, whose voices were joined by a dozen or so kids around the chorus, jumping in to scream FA-LA-LA-LA-LA, LA-LA, LA, LA! We had never seen a bough of holly, had no idea what "gay apparel" was, and we certainly didn't know how to "don" it. And how, exactly, does one "troll"? I'm sure we couldn't define "yuletide," for that matter. But it didn't matter. That nine-syllable chorus was the whole song for those of us under twelve.
It's one that gets stuck in your head. Try to convince me that those nine syllables aren't running through your head right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment