The Holiday Music Fest 2020

Today's little known holiday song -- this time, for Hanukkah on the second night -- comes from what I believe was the first season of the animated series South Park.  It was their initial Christmas special, centered around the adventures of Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, which brought the show even more attention.  I have a tangential story connected to the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas."  

As I think I've mentioned, back in my dark days of P.R. I was the unit publicist on the movie BASEketball, which was directed by David Zucker (of the Airplaine! and The Naked Gun series, which was why he brought me along) and starred Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who did -- and still do -- South Park.  During the movie's production, which overlapped with them being in production on South Park (so, in essence, they were doing two jobs at the same time), Matt and Trey mentioned that the only reason they signed to do the movie is because they were sure the TV series would be canceled after 10 episodes, and they'd have plenty of time to make the movie.  Ha.  So much for the best laid plans.  It was during the movie's production that the TV series started peaking -- for instance they made the cover of both Time and Newsweek during the film.  They said that if they had any idea that the TV show would still be going on, they never would have agreed to be in the movie.  It was a crushing schedule -- including having an editing trailer for them on the set every day, and going back to their production offices after the day's filming -- but they handled it seriously impressively.

Anyway, going back several months, we had a read-through of the movie script one night, and given that it was the "South Park guys," families and kids were invited.  And as it happened, the read-through took place the night after their Christmas special aired.

In the milling around phase of the evening, I went over to Trey and Matt to introduce myself, and I also wanted to tell them how much I particularly had love this specific song.  Given the fame of South Park at that time, they were not surprisingly surrounded by a bunch of young boys gushing about the show.  But in particular, they were gushing about another song in the TV special.  So, I stood off to the side and waited for their fans to finish.

The other song in the show as sung by the character 'Cartman," and lasts about 30 seconds, with the words basically being, "Kyle's mom is a big fat b*tch, she's a b*tch, b*tch, b*tch, she's a big fat b*tch," over and over for half a minute.  The little boys just loooooved that.  And one after another, they enthused to Matt and Tray about it, singing the song.

After they all departed, I finally walked over.  I said hi, we chatted a bit, and then I said how terrific I thought the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas" was.  That the lyrics were so funny, yet touching, and the music was wisftul, and it was just really nicely crafted.  And what was hilarious and memorable was how their faces suddenly filled with a smile of relief.  They completely understood why the little boys all loved the "Kye's mom is a b*tch" song -- but this other was an actual song.  And one they took great pride in.  So, they were SO relieved to have someone praise it, rather than the one getting all the attention.

I also had one question for them.  About a minute into the song, the character Kyle singing it mentions some Hebrew phrase which I couldn't make out, words from some Hebrew Hanukkah song he has to sing instead of getting to sing "Silent Night."  I asked what it was, since I didn't recognize the song, and if they did research to find it or what.  Trey broke out with a big laugh, "Oh, that," he said, "we just made the words up.  We didn't know any Hebrew, so we just wrote some gibberish that sounded right."

(Note:  When I've posted this in the past, it's only been the audio track of the song from the special since the sweet video wasn't available.  But I checked once again this year -- and it's at last there, and I found it.  So...huzzah.  Or rather, chuzzah.
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