Christmas at Ground Zero

Weird Al Yankovic's post-apocalyptic carol (1986)

There are many novelty holiday songs. There are fewer novelty songs about nuclear weapons, but still quite a few. But there is a very narrow intersection of this Venn diagram, of novelty holiday songs about nuclear weapons.

One of my favorites is “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Christmas at Ground Zero,” off of his 1986 album Polka Party! I would embed it below but Vevo apparently doesn’t let one do that, so you’ve gotta click a link.

Is it in good taste? No. But one does not look to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s work for “good taste.” Or, at least, if you do, you will be disappointed. It is not his métier.

The song is not as good as many of his songs — much less what I consider to be his magnum opus, “Dare to be Stupid” — but it is still vintage Yankovic, from his glasses-and-moustache period. This is, to be sure, my favorite period of his work; his later output was sometimes more cleverly written, but there is an authenticity in his “weirdness” here:

It's Christmas at ground zero
There's music in the air
The sleigh bells are ringing, and the carolers are singing
While the air-raid sirens blare

It's Christmas at ground zero
The button has been pressed
The radio just let us know
That this is not a test

The Wikipedia page for the song says that:

The song was the result of Yankovic's label, Scotti Brothers Records, insisting that Yankovic record a Christmas album. However, after Yankovic presented the song to his label, they relented, because it was “a little different from what they were expecting.” After the song was written and recorded, Yankovic wanted to release the song as a commercial single, but Scotti Bros. refused. Undeterred, he used his own money to create a low-budget music video made mostly out of stock footage. … This music video was also Yankovic's directing debut.

The music video is of some interest. I wonder how difficult it was to compile such a film out of stock footage in 1986? Today it would be pretty trivial. But I don’t know how easily available Civil Defense footage was in the late 1980s. Much of it is reminiscent of footage from The Atomic Cafe (1982), and I wonder if that was a convenient intermediary point.

That this was made in 1986, and not, say, 1983, is probably somewhat significant. You’re talking about just enough distance from the great nuclear fear of the early 1980s, but still a point in which the weapons and their possibilities were still quite salient.

It's Christmas at ground zero
Now the missiles are on their way
What a crazy fluke, we're gonna get nuked
On this jolly holiday
What a crazy fluke, we're gonna get nuked
On this jolly holiday

The song was not a hit. Not that one would expect it to be. It is in a category of humor I think of as “intentional dreck,” which I offer up in the most charitable sense of the word, which I associate with things like MAD Magazine — deliberately low-brow, crass, annoying, juvenile, and manic, but occasionally amusing in small doses. I say this with great appreciation of Weird Al, to be sure — it’s dreckiness is, again, intentional.

Apparently the song was one of many removed from air-waves after the 9/11 attacks, because people associated “Ground Zero” with the World Trade Centers. Which sounds plausible, if one can imagine that the song would have otherwise been played on the radio commonly at that time, which seems less plausible.

Nobody seems to have considered what the hibakusha would have thought about the song, but, again, that is somewhat par for the course with this kind of thing. What did Christmas at Ground Zero actually sound like in 1945? Greg Mitchell has unearthed footage of the Catholic mass at Nagasaki that year, which is rather remarkable, and its seriousness and somberness make for quite a contrast.