Next of Ken, Re-Run Style: THE Five Worst Christmas Songs of All Time!

(The following is a slightly updated reprint of a column that ran last year. George Lucas is my hero; in another five or six Christmases, this column will actually be about "My five favorite sandwiches", and I'll claim that was my vision all along, but sandwich technology wasn't quite ready for that when the column was originally written.)

This time of year, you'll find plenty of radio stations who are on a constant 24-hour Christmas music rotation. Most of them start around midnight Thanksgiving and carry straight through Christmas. The idea is to gorge yourself on a veritable buffet of cheerful holiday sounds, sending you into a glazed but mostly pleasant Christmas mood.

Here are the five songs you're likely to hear this season that will not engender the desired holiday spirit...in fact, enough exposure to these, and you might go on a Feliz Navidad-fueled killing spree.