Will they be playing “Christmas Wrapping,” you ask? I hope so. It’s the only Christmas song I can usually stomach. The Waitresses, mind you, not the god-awful re-written Spice Girls version that no only sounds terrible but totally misses the point.
This is the second time or so that this song has come up recently, and no one seems to have commented on one salient fact about the title, so… you do realize that “Christmas Wrapping” is a pun on “rapping”, ie: this song was considered a rap song when it first came out (!!) — Blondie, of all people, is credited with the first top 40 rap song (“Rapture” — ha, ha, another pun!)
I think Bill, that you are old enough that for you it is self-evident (I’ll bet in the 70s you used the verb “to rap” to mean to “to talk”), whereas for people born after the period in question it is totally invisible (a. that is never a rap song and b. don’t you fogeys know it’s called hip-hop?); I’m in-between ages, so for me I am always aware of the generations talking past each other, which I’m pretty sure is happening here, too. Raise your hands if you would totally scoff at the song “Christmas Wrapping” thinking it belonged in the same genre as RunDMC…
When anyone asserts that rap is a recent sort of thing, I point them to my second-favorite sixteenth-century poet, John Skelton. Alas, they didn’t have Top 10 charts back then, but if they had done so, I’m sure that “The Tunning of Elenor Rumming” would have stayed on top for years. Word!
Comics I Don't Understand 
Red white and green stripes. It looks like a candy cane.
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Will they be playing “Christmas Wrapping,” you ask? I hope so. It’s the only Christmas song I can usually stomach. The Waitresses, mind you, not the god-awful re-written Spice Girls version that no only sounds terrible but totally misses the point.
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How do you play Christmas Wrapping and does the HR handbook allow that as proper office interaction?
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So archeologists, physicians, product research and developers, etc. all dress exactly the same in the Cornered universe?
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This is the second time or so that this song has come up recently, and no one seems to have commented on one salient fact about the title, so… you do realize that “Christmas Wrapping” is a pun on “rapping”, ie: this song was considered a rap song when it first came out (!!) — Blondie, of all people, is credited with the first top 40 rap song (“Rapture” — ha, ha, another pun!)
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I’ll admit. I’ve never heard of the song.
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larK, I think the Christmas Wrapping pun was self-evident enough not to have needed mentioning.
But lest you thing I’m saying this smugly, the “Rapture” pun never occurred to me. And I’ve owned the song for thirty-seven years.
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I think Bill, that you are old enough that for you it is self-evident (I’ll bet in the 70s you used the verb “to rap” to mean to “to talk”), whereas for people born after the period in question it is totally invisible (a. that is never a rap song and b. don’t you fogeys know it’s called hip-hop?); I’m in-between ages, so for me I am always aware of the generations talking past each other, which I’m pretty sure is happening here, too. Raise your hands if you would totally scoff at the song “Christmas Wrapping” thinking it belonged in the same genre as RunDMC…
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larK, if that’s not a call for some 80s goofiness, I don’t know what is…
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” Blondie, of all people, is credited with the first top 40 rap song”
On a technicality. Aerosmith released “Walk this Way” earlier, but it didn’t BECOME a rap song until it was covered by Run-DMC.
Aerosmith
Run-DMC
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When anyone asserts that rap is a recent sort of thing, I point them to my second-favorite sixteenth-century poet, John Skelton. Alas, they didn’t have Top 10 charts back then, but if they had done so, I’m sure that “The Tunning of Elenor Rumming” would have stayed on top for years. Word!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45172/the-tunning-of-elenor-rumming
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