Is that ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ or ‘We’re not Gonna Take It’?

To me, Christmas is all about doing the same things over and over again and yet somehow being inspired in a new way.

Take carols, for example.

Sorry, Sunny 100, but I’m not big on “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

I prefer listening to Mahalia Jackson belt out “Go Tell it on the Mountain” – the best version has her singing that shepherds kept their watch “all over their sheep” – and the Cambridge Singers perform “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming.”

This year, I wanted something to help me stay awake on my morning drive downtown to work, so I formed a Pandora station called “Weezer (Holiday).”

Pandora, of course, is a music app that searches for artists and genres similar to those you’ve named your station after. And “Weezer (Holiday)” is a station based on the little-known holiday music of the alternative but also fairly mainstream Wisconsin-based rock band, which does an excellent – and surprisingly moving – rendition of “O Holy Night.”

So this season I’ve discovered things like the Christian metalcore band August Burns Red doing an instrumental version of “Little Drummer Boy,” and the atheist punk band Bad Religion hammering out “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

But the most entertaining moment came when my homemade station served up – drumroll, please – “O Come All Ye Faithful” by none other than Twisted Sister.

Remember them? The Twisted Sister version sounds an awful lot like its ’80s megahit “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” at one point even shamelessly duplicating the guitar rifts.

Try it: “We’re not gonna take it!/No! We ain’t gonna take it!/We’re not gonna take it anymore!”

And now, hold that tune, but sing these words: “O Come All Ye Faithful!/ Joyful and triumphant!/ O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem!”

Now that’s entertainment. Which means it’s terrible, but it’s so terrible that it’s actually pretty interesting, and a fun way to waste time.

Speaking of new discoveries, the other day I was in church and we were singing “What Child is This?” and we got to the line “Why lies He in such mean estate…”

I looked over at my 14-year-old son. For at least the previous 10 years, the rest of that sentence has never failed to entertain the two of us: “Where ox and ass are feeding?”

But this year, my boy, who’s now a couple of inches taller than me, just sang earnestly through the line, and continued on to the next one.

I was proud of him, but a little sad too, because I’m now officially the least mature member of my family.

As usual, Bess and I will have our four children home for the holidays, and we’ve realized that our family road trips are now more important than ever.

The first couple of times we had everybody back under one roof, I just assumed that we’d be eating dinner together every night and watching movies and playing board games and all that good stuff.

But when the two college kids are home, all their friends from high school are usually home, too, which means they all have to go off somewhere and catch up on things. And the high school kids have things going on, too.

So how do we spend time together as a family?

We leave home.

We pile everybody into the old family van, which these days rarely hauls more than a couple of people at a time, and we take a long trip together.

We go somewhere nice and do something fun, but the real fun is in the journey, when we ride and laugh and tell stories and listen to all kinds of music.

Maybe this year we’ll even sing “O Come All Ye Faithful” to the tune of “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

You never know.

This story was originally published December 21, 2016 at 10:17 PM with the headline "Is that ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ or ‘We’re not Gonna Take It’?."