To consider this ridiculous controversy, let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start):
Here are the lyrics of the 19th Century Christmas carol “Deck the Halls,” one of the best known and most sung of the traditional carols these days because it doesn’t mention God, angels, Jesus or anything overtly religious:
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
(There are four more verses, but these are the ones most of us know.)
You would think that nobody could get in trouble using this particular holiday song, but Kansas City-based Hallmark was equal to the challenge. It decided to change the words for one of its new holiday ornaments, designed by “Keepsake Artist,” Matt Johnson. He designed an ornament shaped like a typically gaudy Christmas sweater sporting the altered lyric “Don we now our Fun apparel.” The word “gay” was removed.
Hallmark, much to its surprise, was flooded with complaints, and not just on the basis of one perceived offense, but several, and contradictory ones at that:
1. How dare they mess with the lyrics of a traditional and well-loved carol?
2. This was an anti-gay decision, literally and figuratively.
3. This was political correctness, to avoid criticism from gays.
Confronted with unseasonal hate mail and threats of a boycott, Hallmark did what many corporations do in such crises. It lied. Here was its initial statement, before Hallmark surrendered and apologized with one of those ‘we didn’t mean to offend anyone’ things :
“Hallmark created this year’s Holiday Sweater ornament in the spirit of fun. When the lyrics to “Deck the Halls” were translated from Gaelic and published in English back in the 1800s, the word “gay” meant festive or merry. Today it has multiple meanings, which we thought could leave our intent open to misinterpretation. The trend of wearing festively decorated Christmas sweaters to parties is all about fun, and this ornament is intended to play into that, so the planning team decided to say what we meant: “fun.” That’s the spirit we intended and the spirit in which we hope ornament buyers will take it.”
Huh? I bet lots of the words Hallmark uses in its greeting cards have “multiple meanings”—most of them, in fact. For a company that makes its business with words, Hallmark’s research is remarkably poor—or it is just dodging. “Gay” has had multiple meanings for centuries, and “gay” was used to suggest sexual activities before “Deck the Halls” was written. “Gay” to describe homosexuals is about a century old, though some find evidence of it centuries earlier…like in Chaucer. If Hallmark is really so concerned about archaic meanings, what about the rest of them in “Deck the Halls,” like, say “deck”? What does “tide” mean in this context? Who uses “don” to mean get dressed these days? How about “troll”—I thought that was what annoying people did in comments to websites to cause trouble? And what the hell does “fa la la” mean now, when nobody knows what a madrigal is? Why didn’t Hallmark change the “fa la las” to “yeah yeah yeahs”?
“Deck the Halls” is more chock full of old, obscure words than any three other carols, and Hallmark was worried that people won’t understand gay? Baloney. What they were worried about was people thinking that Hallmark was catering to gays, and that wouldn’t sit well with their homophobic customers. If not, why did they promote the ornament with this…
“When it comes to Christmas sweaters, gaudy can be good! Hang up this flashy sweater to make your tree’s outfit complete. With its catchy phrase, Don we now our FUN apparel! everyone will be in on the joke.”
What joke? I don’t think I get it, or if I do, it’s not funny. It doesn’t say “gay” because–Ha! Ha!—you sure don’t want to get people thinkin’ you’re talkin’ about them queer folk! Is that the joke? Really? I thought everything was up to date in Kansas City.
The complaints about changing lyrics generally is ridiculous; parodies of Christmas songs of all kind can be appropriate and have been popular almost as long as people have sung the real “Deck the Halls.”Hallmark has changed lyrics before, many times, without complaint. This wasn’t a parody, however. This was singling out “gay,” as somehow embarrassing, controversial and “different’ from all those other old terms, because, well, you know. It was gratuitously insulting and unfair: word segregation.
Mostly, however, it was just stupid.
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Sources: Huffington Post, KCTV
The ornament’s description on the website says, “When it comes to Christmas sweaters, gaudy can be good! Hang up this flashy sweater to make your tree’s outfit complete. With its catchy phrase, Don we now our FUN apparel! everyone will be in on the joke.”
Ethics Alarms 
“Why do birds sing so gay?” — Dionne Warwick, right?
The late, great Frankie Lymon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I
Wow. I was WAY off.
According to Wiki, a cover was done by Diana Ross in 1981. This makes me feel a little better — it doesn’t excuse my thought that it was Dionne — but I knew that I had heard a woman sing it. Phew!
Yeah, but wasn’t Frankie incredible?
If he seriously wrote that song at 13, he was a genius. That could have been record label spin — those guys looked too well prepped with their funny one-line responses, but I’d like to think that Frankie really did write that song. What a 13 year-old knows about love I have no idea, but what a great song.
He was a true prodigy, an earlier Michael Jackson, and he also had a tragic and short life. That video makes me sad, while also amazing me with such a confident talent from one so young.
There was a gay singer/entertainer character on the Irish sitcom Father Ted.
He wasn’t a regular, though, and I can’t remember his name.
His favorite things in life were puppies and jumpers.
(Jumper, in Ireland, means sweater)
And the jumpers he favored were gaudy Christmas jumpers.
Haha
Hallmark sucks.
BTW, that sitcom did not observe silly crybaby PC rules.
They were, after all, making fun of priests and The Church every single episode.
Dear Hallmark,
Your cards are no longer gay to me. They are now blah blah blah….
One of my favorite sayings is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” If you’re a teacher and you have to tell a class you’re in charge, you’re not. If you have to tell me you’re not a bigot, you are one. (Etc.) Hallmark had to tell me that sweater is fun, because it isn’t. They’re avoiding calling it gay, because in the vulgar sense of that term–stupid, unfortunate, ugly–it is.
And I appreciate the Rodgers and Hammerstein shout-out.
Changes to the classics must be at least this good:
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don’t we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don’t love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!
-Walt Kelly-
RIP Pogo…best comic strip ever.
Why even go there? Choose a different song.
let’s hope Hallmark doesn’t get its mitts on Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science.”
they would probably rename it Poet’s Festival, causing Friedrich to turn over in Röcken.
let’s hope Hallmark doesn’t get its mitts on Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science.”
they would probably rename it Poet’s Festival, causing Friedrich to turn over in Röcken.
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Haha!
I hate that stupid ornament, as well.
The words on the sweater read “Don we now our fun apparel!”, yet the sweater really says “Please come kick my ass!”
The words on the sweater read “Don we now our fun apparel!”, yet the sweater really says “Please come kick my ass!”
*******
True.
I’ve never known one gay person with bad taste…it is safe to assume no gay person would wear that hideous sweater, therefore, I must state: that sweater could not be gay.
Here’s Eoin McLove, Irish aficionado of cakes, jumpers and puppies:
I think the only people wearing that will be 2nd and 3rd grade boys compelled by their loving mothers with the admonition “you only have to wear it once so you can tell grand-ma you wore it, now get out the door and march yourself to school, and ignore the line of thick-necks cracking their knuckles out there!”
Ah, they missed troll! They should have corrected that ‘offensive’ word and put ‘homeless’ in it’s place. 😉 Seriously, when the pc types take over a country it is truly in trouble.
Hallmark’s decision? That’s so fun.
Rob Balder did a song called “Babelfishmas” where he took Christmas Carol lyrics and ran them through a language-to-language translation chain, then sang the mangled results to the original tunes. This particular line ended up as “You wear now our homosexual costume,” making me shoot my hot cocoa out my nose the first time I heard it. It’s a bit early for carols in my estimation, but I’ll link it anyway, as it’s hilarious.
“You wear now our homosexual costume,”
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That cracked me up.
Wow. When I saw the card, I assumed they actually thought they were cleverly changing the meaning of the carol by inserting the word fun. I figured it was some 20 somethings who didn’t know what the word ‘gay’ meant. Never attribute to malice…
I would have just assumed that they euphemized “gay” because it’s a reference to sex, and not simply because it was archaic. But switching the word out that makes middle-schoolers giggle just calls more attention to the fact that you switched it out…