Green Chri$tma$

Green Chri$tma$ is a piece of audio theater written and performed by Stan Freberg and Daws Butler and released by Capitol Records in 1958 (catalog number F 4097).

Plot

Mr. Scrooge (Freberg), the head of an unnamed advertising agency, has gathered a group of clients to discuss tying their products into Christmas. One attendee, Bob Cratchit (Butler), wants to resist tying his spice company into Christmas, preferring to send Christmas cards with a simple message of "Peace on Earth." Scrooge extols the virtues of making money off of Christmas, and Cratchit counters by reminding Scrooge "whose birthday we're celebrating."

Message

The piece is a scathing indictment of the commercialization of Christmas, with references of Christmas-themed advertising by Coca-Cola and Marlboro Cigarettes, among others. The names of the characters are taken from A Christmas Carol In Prose by Charles Dickens, as is one of the products "advertised" ("Tyn-E-Tim Chestnuts"). "Green Chri$tma$" also contains a parody of the Christmas carol The Twelve Days Of Christmas and an original song by Freberg, Christmas Comes But Once A Year.

Release

At first, Capitol Records refused to release the record. Lloyd Dunn, the president of Capitol, told Freberg the record was offensive to everybody in advertising, and predicted Freberg would never work in advertising again. Freberg responded with his intent to cancel his entire recording contract with Capitol. He spoke to a contact at Verve Records, and the company offered to release the record without even hearing it. Faced with this, Capitol finally released it, but with no promotion or publicity.

Initial Reception

The record was attacked in advertising trade magazines. It was played only twice in New York by one disk jockey, and the station's sales department threatened to have him fired if he played it again. KMPC in Los Angeles played the record, but some advertisers required that their ads be scheduled more than fifteen minutes away from it. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times condemned it, but the author later admitted he hadn't listened to it. Similarly, Robert Wood (then station manager of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, later president of CBS), told Freberg the record was "sacrilegious" and he didn't need to hear it because he had read about it.

However, the mail Freberg received from the public, including Christian clergy and rabbis, was overwhelmingly positive.

Aftermath

Within six months, Coca-Cola and Marlboro, both recognizably satirized in the record without being named, asked Freberg for advertising campaigns. He turned down Marlboro, but he created a campaign for Coca-Cola that was very successful.

Rebroadcast/Rerelease

Of especially noteworthy importance is the impact of this song's message in the heart of corporate America, as reflected in the fact that it received no commercial AM radio airplay until 1983; only getting a little FM airplay before that (such as on the Doctor Demento Show) and only slightly more AM airtime after 1983. Beginning in 1972, Capitol reissued the single as catalog number 3503, dividing the piece into two parts; it remained in the Christmas singles section of record stores for years thereafter.

References

* Citation
title = It Only Hurts When I Laugh
last = Freberg
first = Stan
year = 1988
publisher = Times Books
isbn = 0812912977