11 Days Until Christmas

Despite what you might be thinking, I AM filled with the holiday spirit. Once Thanksgiving rolls by, you can almost always find me with a candy cane in my mouth quietly humming my favorite Christmas tunes; frankly it is all I can do to keep from throwing my body into the nearest snow bank and furiously making snow angles! But how can I help myself? Everywhere I go, Christmas bells are ringing, Grandma is getting run over by reindeers, and a holiday is steadily approaching that will enable me to get off work and watch 25 consecutive hours of A Christmas Story, without feeling guilty.

Like anything though, there is a dark side to every Christmas cookie, and I have to talk to you about the sinister cloud that has recently settled over one of my favorite Christmas songs, and more importantly, the singing group that made it a legend.

So I ask you, Alvin and the Chipmunks***: were they the jovial characters David "Dave" Seville would have us believe? Or were their seemingly-lighthearted Chipmunk lives a carefully- orchestrated act, meant to hide a terrible truth: that Alvin, Simon, and Theodore were being driven to exhaustion by Dave’s insatiable greed for cash?


Yes, Dave was kind to adopt not one, but all THREE of the Chipmunk brothers from the animals-who-dress-like-humans orphanage. It is expensive to raise a child these days, and before Alvin, Simon and Theodore, Dave was a struggling songwriter-surviving pay check to pay check. But, Dave was desperate for a hit song; and once he realized those Chipmunks could talk, what was the FIRST THING Mr. Seville did? That’s right, he threw them into a recording studio and wouldn’t let them out until Alvin sang “hula hoop” to his liking.

Was it because the charismatic Chipmunk trio WANTED to spend their childhood as a touring musical act, or because David Seville had struck up a deal with the hula hoop manufacturers for a big check, in exchange for a product placement in “The Chipmunk Song, Christmas Don’t’ be Late.”

David’s song did go on to be a holiday hit, and hula hoops were flying off the shelves as one of the year’s most poplar Christmas toys. But where were Allen, Simon and Theodore in all of that? Did their Christmas dreams come true? I guess we will never really know.

***If you haven’t seen Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoons CLICK HERE to get up to speed.