(Ever wanted to punch a song in the mouth?)

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Have you heard it? That bone-warping misery-fest masquerading as a song called The Christmas Shoes? A song so unbelievably soppy, so intentionally saccharine, it comes with an anti-depressant scrip.

This may be the first song in human history that can actually raise LDL cholesterol.

Or, even worse, have you seen it? There’s an accompanying music video on YouTube…but of course there is. There’s a video of everything on YouTube, including handwriting found on Mars, promises kept by the Obama administration, and other imaginary events.

How wretched is The Christmas Shoes? Here are some online reviews:

• most annoying song ever
• manipulative and worth missing
• I commented on you tube on how rediculously bad that song was and i got hate mail from a few religeous freaks wishing me death, lol

(Well, Commenter Number Three, if the “religeous freaks” don’t whack you, your second-grade English teacher surely will, lol omg ups pdf asap)

The Christmas Shoes. It’s the worst of those irritating, heartstring-tugging holiday concoctions, designed for no other reason than to make stagnant female facebook addicts weep, click ‘Like,’ type a misspelled comment with twelve exclamation points, and then ‘Share’ the foul thing with everybody else, along with tired, overused, obligatory comments like “U MUST C” and “cried my eyes out LOL.”

In case you’ve lived a charmed life and missed this maudlin multimedia tragedy, here’s the short version: a little boy wants to buy shoes for his mom, but he can’t afford them, so a guy in line behind him pays for the shoes.

So far, so good, right? A nice, tight, sweet story, that could never possibly happen in America, or Detroit. Especially during the group psychosis we call the holiday shopping season.

Anyway, that’s the short version. It’s when you get to the full-blown five-minute rendition that the pain begins.

The morose Charles-Dickens-on-painkillers ditty doesn’t mention the kid’s name, but I always think of him as ‘Nobby.’ He looks like a Nobby to me, with his knitted Duck Dynasty skull cap and eyes the size of filmmaker Michael Moore’s trans-fat budget. And the sap in line behind him – the guy who ends up paying for Nobby’s shoes – the way he throws money around, his name might’ve been Nancy Pelosi.

Except this guy used his own money.

The song deprives us of much-needed detail. We could infer that Nobby’s mom is sick — as she bloody well might well be, given that it’s winter and the poor woman is barefoot. Another bit of circumstantial evidence: Nobby says she might meet Jesus tonight. But maybe Mommy’s a Major League Baseball scout, prospecting Cubans.

Other clues about Mom’s condition: Nobby is in a hurry and “Daddy said there’s not much time.” But we can’t know that she’s sick – Mom could’ve been picked up for assembling fertilizer-based bombs, and at the last minute the Governor rejected her stay of execution, and now she’s about to go all Green Mile at Leavenworth.

And how about The Sap? We’re supposed to believe this contrived bit, in which some frenzied guy is trying to get out of the mall on Christmas Eve without drop-kicking the twenty-ninth consecutive Goth-attired teen who bumped into him while texting — but yet he has both extra money and patience?

Oh, please. Have you ever seen guys in full-blown-last-minute-Christmas-shopping mode? Picture it: first, young Nobby irritates everybody in line by glacially excavating nickels and pennies from his pockets. And then, after Nobby makes the discovery that women’s shoes cost more than $1.28, he spins around, urchin-stares up at the stranger in line behind him, and organizes a little impromptu violin concerto.

“Gee, mister. My cow-sized eyes and I don’t have enough money. What am I gonna do, mister?”
“Well, for a start, you’re gonna be a cold-footed little no-shoe-buying chap. Push off, measles monkey.”

Over the years, people much smarter (and funnier) than I have wrestled with the damaging effects of being subjected to this seasonal Bummer Generator. For instance, one guy’s Christmas Shoes survival tips included this handy advice: should the song suddenly occupy your car radio, remember to tuck in your shoulder before leaping out of the car. (the tuck helps facilitate a smoother roll across the freeway)

Other Christmas Shoes victims recommend more radical remedies: self-maiming; eardrum-ectomies; avoiding any inbound radio waves by blocking them with a large object, like Canada, or Michael Moore. But though the melody is admittedly malodorous, I don’t think it calls for anything as drastic as having to look at Michael Moore. I mean, it’s not like the thing’s being sung by Burl Ives. Being forced to listen to Burl Ives singing Christmas Shoes would elevate this fairly pedestrian crime to the level of felony public menace, and require some tit-for-tat retribution, like public stoning, or being forced to watch a Ben Stiller marathon.

Defenders of this drippy, shameless spectacle…and there are defenders, although both of them live in a severely-gated community named ‘Happy Lawns’ that has curfews, limited visitation, and lots of padding…will argue that Christmas Shoes is a touching depiction of what Christmas is all about.

I disagree.

Christmas is about music…specifically, Christmas music. And the definition of “Christmas music” is non-negotiable. When a candidate carol is attempting to qualify as Christmas music, certain things are immediate disqualifiers:

1. any song that, like Christmas Shoes, makes you want to drive a bus into an overpass truss
2. any song that begins in a minor key and then, contrary to every accepted form of musical decency in the known universe, ends in a major key
3. Burl Ives

Besides, no self-respecting lyricist would pen this couplet:

I’ll never forget the look on his face
When he said “Momma’s gonna look so great.”

Seriously. Face, he rhymes with great.

Good grief. No wonder she’s shoeless.