There is one Christmas song that’s just so funny and smart and entertaining it’s on my iPod playlist year-round:  “Elf’s Lament” by the Barenaked Ladies.  If you come across the original recording — not hard to do — go for that, because it features Michael Buble and sounds awesome (even if you, like me, aren’t all that excited about Michael Buble).  There is a video on YouTube in which someone has set the original song to a video made from scenes from the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie, featuring the elf who wants to be a dentist but who is really a stand-in for any cultural taboo.  (Come to think of it, that movie contained a lot of subtext about cultural taboos…)  That’s a cute video, too.

But here I present to you the BNL performing this song by themselves, live.