The Theology of Red Slingback Pumps

It is Thursday again, which means it is time for another blog post. Unfortunately, today is also Christmas Day, and that presents a bit of a problem. Being Jewish, I never have much to say about Christmas itself. I have my Christmas traditions, of course. Later today, I will order Chinese takeout, then head to the cineplex for a movie. Beyond that, however, my holiday observations tend to be limited.

For the past half hour, I've been staring at a blank screen, trying to come up with a Christmas-themed topic worthy of the occasion. So far, I have produced absolutely nothing. Fortunately, SiriusXM has been providing the soundtrack to my frustration, and moments ago it inadvertently solved my problem for me. The station suddenly launched into NewSong's perennial holiday favorite, "Christmas Shoes," forcing me to do what I have done every December for the past quarter century: change the station immediately.

To quote Daryl Hall and John Oates, "I can't go for that. No can do."

"Christmas Shoes" is the most confectionary, cavity-inducing drivel ever recorded. It is a song so emotionally manipulative, so disgustingly maudlin, and so profoundly cynical in its understanding of human emotion that I feel the need to shower after listening to it. For more than twenty years, I have tried to understand how this song became a Christmas standard. For more than twenty years, I have failed.

Which, now that I think about it, sounds an awful lot like the beginning of a blog post.

I have spent more than twenty years trying to understand "Christmas Shoes."

That may sound like an exaggeration. It isn't.

The song was released in 2000. It became a hit. Radio stations embraced it. A television movie somehow emerged from it. People cried. To this day, nearly a quarter century later, I still encounter listeners who speak of the song with genuine affection. They find it moving. Inspirational. Heartwarming.

I hate it. With a passion.

Not in the casual way people hate certain songs. Not in the way someone might complain about hearing Mariah Carey for the seventeenth time in a single shopping trip. Not in the way people pretend to hate "Last Christmas" while secretly singing along to every word. No. My relationship with "Christmas Shoes" is far more complicated.

I am fascinated by it.

The song has occupied rent-free space in my head for more than two decades, and I have spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it. I once devoted nearly an hour of my music podcast to explaining why I believe it may be one of the worst songs ever recorded. Not the worst Christmas song. Not the worst Christian song. One of the worst songs. Period.

And before anybody accuses me of targeting Christmas music, let me make something abundantly clear. This is not an attack on Christmas. It is not an attack on Christianity. It is not an attack on Christians or Christian music. Some of the kindest people I know are Christians, and some of the very best songs ever written are Christmas songs. My frustration with "Christmas Shoes" has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with storytelling.

Perhaps the strangest part is that contemporary Christian music isn't even my world. Nor is Christmas itself. Every December, America transforms itself into a giant snow globe, and my family largely experiences it the way Kyle Broflovski experiences Christmas on South Park: close enough to understand what's happening, close enough to appreciate much of it, but always just a little outside the circle looking in.

I'm Jewish. My parents were Jewish. My wife is Jewish. My sons are Jewish. Christmas has always been something I've experienced from a neighboring cultural zip code rather than from inside the house itself. Yet it would be impossible to spend more than fifty years in America without developing a relationship with Christmas music. And musically? I have standing. Frankly, all Jews have earned the right to claim Christmas music. So many of the songs that accompany the month of December were written by fellow members of the tribe. Irving Berlin gave the world "White Christmas." Mel Tormé co-wrote "The Christmas Song." Jay Livingston and Ray Evans gave us "Silver Bells." Johnny Marks wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and "A Holly Jolly Christmas." Jews supplied half of Santa's playlist. The relationship between Jews and Christmas music remains one of the stranger and more delightful ironies in American culture.

Nor are we lacking for holiday music of our own. Most people know Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song," though many don't realize there are four different versions. Tom Lehrer's "Hanukkah in Santa Monica" remains delightful. Sharon Jones' "8 Days of Hanukkah" is a masterpiece. Saturday Night Live gifted us with "Christmastime for the Jews." Dan Bern's "Waffle House Hanukkah" is to hash browns as...well, I've got nothing with which to finish that analogy. You'll just have to listen for yourself. Daveed Diggs recorded the adorable "Puppy for Hanukkah." And Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?" is an all-time favorite. And, as I've already mentioned, South Park gave us Kyle Broflovski's "Lonely Jew on Christmas," which may be the most accurate representation of my childhood ever committed to animation. The point, however, is not to compare holidays. The point is that I have spent a lifetime immersed in holiday music, and over the years I have developed strong opinions about it.

As anyone who has known me for more than ten minutes can probably attest, I am not especially forgiving when it comes to bad songs. Every December, the complaints begin anew. The moment Elmo & Patsy's "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" comes on the radio, I generally begin searching for another station. The idea of a grandmother being flattened by Santa's transportation network somehow fails to fill me with holiday cheer. "Dominick the Donkey" and I have maintained a respectful distance from one another for decades. The song exists. I acknowledge its existence. That is the extent of our relationship.

At the same time, my tolerance for holiday nonsense is actually quite high. I grew up on Dr. Demento. I love Bob Rivers. I love Stan Freberg. I love Weird Al. Absurdity has never been the problem. In fact, one of my favorite internet theories argues that Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is not actually about a Christmas party at all but rather a gathering of witches conducting some sort of occult ceremony that repeatedly disguises itself whenever an outsider enters the room. Once you've heard the theory, it's difficult to listen to the song any other way. The mood is right. The spirit's up. We're here tonight. Then somebody opens the door, and everyone abruptly pivots to "Simply having a wonderful Christmastime," and the listener is left wondering what exactly was taking place moments earlier. Is the theory ridiculous? Absolutely. Does it improve the song? Considerably.

Every December, people attempt to win the Last Christmas challenge by avoiding Wham! for the entire holiday season, and every December I lose. Sometimes the defeat comes in a grocery store. Sometimes it comes in a pharmacy. Occasionally, George Michael emerges from a random Facebook reel when I least expect him. However it happens, I rarely survive beyond the first couple of weeks of December before another year of competition comes to an abrupt end. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey spends eleven months in hibernation before being ceremonially awakened by the internet sometime around Thanksgiving. Millions of people complain about hearing All I Want for Christmas Is You, yet those same people continue streaming it in numbers large enough to send it racing back up the charts every year. At this point, the argument itself has become a holiday tradition.

What I'm trying to say is that I have made peace with a great deal of Christmas music nonsense over the years. I've accepted flying reindeer, talking snowmen, haunted misers, magical workshops, and enough novelty records to fill an entire shelf. A song does not need to be realistic for me to enjoy it. It doesn't even need to be particularly good.

What it does need to do is understand what it is.

Novelty songs understand the joke. Parodies understand the joke. Even the strangest Christmas recordings usually possess enough self-awareness to recognize their own absurdity. "Christmas Shoes" is different. It tells a story that raises more questions than any novelty record I have ever heard, then asks me to treat those questions as evidence of profound emotional depth.

Let's begin at the source. With lyrics.

It was almost Christmas time

there I stood in another line

Tryin’ to buy that last gift or two

not really in the Christmas mood.

So standing in line at the mall on Christmas Eve has made this consumer grumpy and impatient. Hard to imagine, right? After all, who doesn’t love last minute shopping as retailers are trying to close and go home to their own families on Christmas Eve? Seriously, if ever a lyric was unneeded, it would be this profound piece of exposition. It also should be mentioned that the shameful rhyme scheme of the first verse is on par with Steve Miller Band levels of incompetency. A rhyme that doesn’t work sticks out to me like a dead pixel on a television screen, and. listening to this verse causes me emotional anguish. Time does not rhyme with line; nor does two rhyme with mood. These rhymes are garbage, and this will be a recurring problem throughout the song.

Still, the first four lines seem harmless enough.

But Buckle up.

Standing right in front of me

was a little boy waiting anxiously

Pacing ’round like little boys do

And in his hands he held a pair of shoes

(Okay, I'll bite...what's with the shoes?)

His clothes were worn and old

he was dirty from head to toe

Dirty from head to toe? So he is a Dickensian street urchin? Everyone knows that appearance is everything–especially during the Christmas season. Hell, the entirety of the song is about consumerism. So who allowed Oliver Twist in the store? Note to shoppers: At this point, you should be gesturing to mall security.

And when it came his time to pay

I couldn’t believe what I heard him say

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please

It’s Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size

Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there’s not much time

You see she’s been sick for quite a while

And I know these shoes would make her smile

And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight

According to the song, his mother is dying. Not eventually. Not someday. Not "she's been sick for a while and things aren't looking good." Dying tonight. Those are the stakes the song establishes. The possibility of her meeting Jesus before morning is presented as immediate and urgent. Yet somehow this child is spending those precious hours shopping instead of sitting beside her. I understand that the songwriter wants us focused on the sacrifice. What I can't understand is why nobody in the room seems remotely concerned that a young boy has apparently wandered off during what may be the final night of his mother's life.

It’s Christmas Eve. Christmas EVE. And your mother is DYING? Kid, go home, take a shower and sit with your mom. If your MOM has moments to live, you do not go shopping! And let me just pose this question: how in the hell did this kid get to the mall anyway? Does Bob Cratchett even know that Tiny Tim has wandered off? Without his crutches? NewSong missed a beat here. The kid should be on crutches. That is all that’s missing

And about the shoes, no young child knows what size shoes his or her mother wears. It is a good bet Daddy doesn’t even know her shoe size. Did the kid take time to measure his mother’s feet?

I’ve gone shoe shopping with my wife. I know the drill. My wife wears a size 8-½. Except when she doesn't.   She always has to try on multiple pairs in order to get just the right fit. And if you look at the red slingbacks with a 3 ½ inch stiletto heel that NewSong put on the cover of their album, the kid’s mom definitely needs a proper fitting for these to work, then she needs to walk in them to be sure. (Shoe-shopping with my wife is an all-day affair.)

I know there are a lot of people who believe in a bodily resurrection and I am not here to debate the theology of that. But are you telling me that what we are wearing when we die will be our clothes for eternity? Seriously, let me know, because I need to wear something comfy but stylish 24/7/365 just in case. I mean, if I keel over while writing this post, I will meet Jesus in an old pair of gym shorts and a mismatched t-shirt with a bleach spot from spillage when doing laundry

And is this kid’s brother in a dress shop elsewhere in the mall? If not, mama’s meeting Jesus tonight in a hospital gown paired with either that pair of red slingbacks with a 3 ½  inch stiletto heel or the ugly brocaded shoes from the Lifetime movie based on this song that look more like what a young boy would pick out for mama. Either way, it’s not a good look.But I digress.

This little ditty is not based in any sort of reality. I’m two stanzas in and I’m already annoyed. But wait, is that Ozzy I hear? “All aboard!” The Crazy Train is about to leave the station.

"He counted pennies for what seemed like years

Then the cashier said, “Son, there’s not enough here”

Stop right there. Just stop! This street urchin of a young boy looking like an extra from a touring company of Les Miserables just said mama – who has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel – needs these shoes to meet Jesus because red slingbacks with a 3 ½ inch stiletto heel are the little black dress of the afterlife. And this cashier is nickel and diming the kid? That’s cold, man. What in the name of Wal-Mart kind of customer service is this?

Oh wait, it’s okay. Our narrator steps in...but not before making the kid beg for it:

"He searched his pockets frantically

Then he turned and he looked at me

He said Mama made Christmas good at our house

Though most years she just did without

Tell me Sir, what am I going to do,

Somehow I’ve got to buy her these Christmas shoes

So I laid the money down,

I just had to help him out"

Way to make the soon-to-be motherless little guy sweat it out, dude. Nice.

"I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said

Mama’s gonna look so great"

So the young kid plans to rush to the hospital so he can jam his dying mother’s feet into a pair of red slingbacks with a 3 ½ inch stiletto heel? I don’t think this is part of her care plan. And this woman is dying. Soon. Like maybe tonight. Have you ever tried to put shoes on someone who isn’t helping you? I am guessing it is not a pleasant experience for any of the participants.

And, again, the rhyme scheme! "House" and "without," "do" and "shoes," "down" and "out."

What the hell?

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please

It’s Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size

Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there’s not much time

You see she’s been sick for quite a while

And I know these shoes would make her smile

And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight

Admittedly, I am Jewish, but many a Christian has attempted to save my soul through the years. After several attempts by evangelicals to proselytize me, I decided to read the Gospels for myself. I figured if I had to defend my religious beliefs, it was best that I know the New Testament better than those using it to condemn me to hell. Maybe I missed something in the reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but I don’t remember any book or verse alluding to Jesus’s fascination with shoes. The thought of Jesus jumping up and down enthusiastically, exclaiming “OMG, love the open toes! And such a sensible heel. They’re fabulous!”, or, to the contrary, a snarky Jesus standing before the Pearly Gates telling the recently deceased, “I may have died for your sins, but those shoes are unforgivable. Have fun burning in hell” seems particularly off-message during this time of year.

I knew I’d caught a glimpse of heaven’s love

As he thanked me and ran out

I knew that God had sent that little boy

To remind me just what Christmas is all about.

Really?

The only way God could remind the lead singer of a contemporary Christian music group about what Christmas is all about is to give the mother of this impoverished child an incurable disease and then strategically placing said kid with insufficient funds in line with of a grouchy shopper and a heartless cashier? Couldn’t he just watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Or A Charlie Brown Christmas? From what I remember, Linus does a pretty good job of reminding viewers what Christmas is all about – and no one dies of cancer. Or consumption, or the plague. We’re never told what’s killing mom. Maybe, like Old Yeller, she is suffering from a case of hydrophoby. Regardless, rigor mortis has reared its ugly head. “God bless us, everyone.”

So yes, Christmas Eve shopper, God did all of this for you just so that you would, you know, feel all warm and fuzzy. This self-important asshole is clearly proud of an act of Christian love that begins and ends at a cash register and not, you know, with the guy making sure the kid gets back home or to Hospice or to the hospital safely. It doesn’t end with the guy making sure the family has enough to eat. It doesn’t end with him connecting the family to social services. It doesn’t end with him making sure mom gets help. The Lord works in mysterious, very overwrought ways.

It turns out that Christmas really is about fetishism, terminal illness and commercialism.

But wait—we are just getting started.

We need to discuss the boy. Not the shoes.

The boy.

Because the older I get, the less interested I become in the footwear and the more interested I become in the fact that an apparently unsupervised child is wandering through a department store on Christmas Eve while his mother is spending what may be her final hours on earth.

Once I start treating the characters like actual people instead of emotional devices, the story becomes increasingly difficult to accept.

For starters, nobody seems particularly interested in finding this child.

Think about everything that has already happened before the narrator enters the picture. The kid has somehow made his way to the mall. He has selected a pair of shoes. He has stood in line. He has waited his turn at the register. He has attempted to purchase the shoes. He has delivered a detailed explanation of why he needs them. Throughout all of this, not a single adult appears to be looking for him.

The song never tells us where he came from, but it certainly doesn't suggest that he arrived with a parent. In fact, the longer I think about it, the less likely that seems. If his mother is truly spending what may be her final hours on earth, and if Daddy says "there's not much time," then what exactly is happening back at home? Is everyone calmly carrying on with their evening while their young son disappears into the night? Has no one noticed he's gone? Has no one looked in his bedroom? The backyard? The neighbor's house? At some point, somebody ought to be asking where the kid is.

Instead, the song acts as though his presence at the mall is perfectly normal.

The song never explains how he arrived at the mall. Did he walk there? Further, it never explains how he's getting home. It never explains where his father is. The father appears briefly in the lyrics to establish urgency and then vanishes so completely that he might as well have entered the witness protection program. If my wife were spending what might be her final hours on earth, footwear would not rank especially high on my list of priorities. Daddy obviously did not send the boy to purchase the shoes. So, if we assume the child just left home unannounced, there are much greater problems here than a lack of pennies.

And if the song never explains the child's arrival at the mall, it also never explains how he is getting home. Take a moment and think about what actually happens after the narrator pays for the shoes.

The song ends.

That's it.

The child thanks him, runs out of the store, and disappears into the night. The narrator experiences a warm spiritual glow, concludes that God has orchestrated the entire event to remind him what Christmas is all about, and presumably heads home feeling pretty good about himself.

Meanwhile, I am left with questions.

A lot of questions.

The most immediate of which is: where exactly is this kid going?

The store is closing. It is dark outside. Christmas Eve has arrived. The child is alone. His mother is allegedly spending what may be her final hours on earth. His father appears to have outsourced the entire crisis-management operation to a grade-school student. Yet nobody—not the narrator, not the cashier, not the songwriter—seems remotely interested in how this little Dickensian street urchin plans to get home.

I find myself mentally calculating distances. I think about the roads I would have had to cross to reach the mall when I was a kid. I think about traffic. I think about intersections. I think about the fact that, growing up, I would have had to navigate State Route 62, Interstate 77, and one of the busiest commercial districts in Stark County, Ohio, just to reach a shopping center. Had my parents discovered I was attempting such a journey, my mother's cause of death would not have been whatever affliction is currently threatening the woman in this song. She would have risen from her hospital bed specifically to kill me herself.

The narrator never considers any of this.

Instead, he buys the shoes and immediately begins congratulating himself.

This is perhaps my favorite part of the entire song because it accidentally reveals something deeply uncomfortable about the narrator's character. At no point does he ask the child where he lives. He doesn't ask whether someone is waiting for him. He doesn't offer him a ride. He doesn't attempt to locate the father. He doesn't contact a relative. He doesn't even seem mildly curious about how an apparently unsupervised child ended up wandering around a department store on Christmas Eve carrying enough emotional baggage to qualify for overhead storage on a commercial flight.

No. He buys shoes.

Mission accomplished.

The more I think about it, the less heroic this gesture becomes.

Imagine explaining the situation afterward.

"Did you help the child?"

"Absolutely."

"Wonderful. Did you make sure he got home safely?"

"No."

"Did you help locate his family?"

"No."

"Did you make sure his mother received care?"

"No."

"Did you connect them with social services?"

"No."

"Then what exactly did you do?"

"I purchased footwear."

And somehow this qualifies as a glimpse of heaven's love.

The song's understanding of charity is fascinating. Faced with poverty, illness, grief, and what appears to be a complete collapse of adult supervision, the narrator solves the one problem that matters least. It is the humanitarian equivalent of arriving at the scene of a five-alarm house fire and proudly announcing that you've watered the begonias.

What makes the situation even stranger is that the song expects us to view the cashier as the obstacle. Think about that for a moment. The cashier is the only person in the story doing his job. A child approaches the register with merchandise he cannot afford. The cashier informs him of this reality. That is not cruelty. That is retail. Yet the song quietly positions him as the villain because he fails to immediately waive store policy in response to an increasingly elaborate Christmas tragedy unfolding in aisle seven.

Frankly, I feel bad for the cashier.

Poor bastard. The poor guy is trying to close the store and get home to his own family before Christmas morning. Instead, he finds himself trapped inside a theological hostage situation involving a dying mother, a missing father, a self-important narrator, and a child who apparently believes red slingbacks are essential equipment for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

Which brings us back to the shoes.

Because the more seriously I take this song, the stranger the shoes become.

I understand the symbolism. I understand what the songwriter is reaching for. What I don't understand is why footwear has become the central theological concern of the evening. The child doesn't want his mother to hear one final expression of love. He doesn't want her surrounded by family. He doesn't want her comforted during her final hours. He wants her wearing the correct shoes.

Specifically, red slingbacks.

I remain unconvinced that Jesus cares this much about shoes.

Perhaps I missed the relevant passages. Maybe there is an apocryphal Gospel in which Christ spends several chapters reviewing sandals and critiquing arch support. Perhaps somewhere between Matthew and Revelation there exists a powerful sermon on open-toe elegance. If so, I have overlooked it completely.

The only cultural figure I can think of who demonstrates a comparable interest in feet is Quentin Tarantino, and while imagining Jesus with a foot fetish and a love for Uma Thurman makes the song infinitely more enjoyable, it also makes it far more stupid.

So the narrator buys the shoes and immediately experiences what can only be described as a Hallmark Channel religious awakening. The child thanks him, runs out of the store, and vanishes from the story forever. That's it. Roll credits. Merry Christmas.

But where is he going? Seriously.

Where is he going?

Because if we are treating these people like actual human beings rather than props in a seasonal morality play, this seems like a rather important question.

The store is closing. It is dark outside. Christmas Eve has arrived. The kid is alone. His mother is dying. His father is nowhere to be found. Yet somehow I am expected to focus on the shoes. Listeners should be concerned about the boy's walk home.

Perhaps the kid lives next door to the mall. I suppose that's possible, though zoning of commercial districts tend to suggest otherwise. I have never found a commercial shopping district in a residential neighborhood.

Then again, perhaps the shoes are magic. Maybe the boy will put them on himself, click his heels three times, and say "There's no place like home" until Glinda the Good Witch sends him over a rainbow.

At this point, either explanation seems equally supported by the lyrics. Said another way, neither explanation is supported by the lyrics. Frankly, the lyrics are a mess. Even the kid's story raises questions. We're told that most years Mom "just did without." This detail is meant to emphasize sacrifice, and admittedly it succeeds. It paints a picture of a mother who consistently put the needs of her family ahead of her own. Fair enough. But if Mom spent years doing without, why are we suddenly pretending that her dying wish is a pair of red slingbacks?

The kid never says she wants the shoes.

The father never says she wants the shoes.

The narrator never says she wants the shoes.

The entire plan appears to have originated in the mind of a panicked child who has decided that eternal salvation may hinge on a last-minute shopping trip. And somehow every adult in the song immediately agrees with this assessment.

Maybe that's what bothers me most. Nobody challenges the premise.

Nobody says, "You know what would probably make your mother happiest? Seeing you."

Nobody says, "Let's get you home."

Nobody says, "I suspect your mother is less concerned about footwear than she is about spending time with her family."

The song simply assumes that the kid is right. The shoes become the mission, and everything else fades into the background. It's a strange choice because the emotional core of the story is already sitting right there in front of us. A child is losing his mother. That's heartbreaking. It doesn't need embellishment. It doesn't need symbolism. It certainly doesn't need a trip to Payless.

Yet NewSong seems terrified to trust that reality on its own.

Instead, the song keeps piling sentiment on top of sentiment, as though grief by itself isn't enough.

We need the child. We need the poverty. We need Christmas Eve. We need the dying mother. We need the shoes. We need Jesus. We need a miraculous encounter with a stranger. We need a life lesson. We need a choir.

By the end, the song resembles a Christmas tree that somebody couldn't stop decorating. Eventually there are so many ornaments hanging from the branches that you can no longer see the tree. And that's a shame because buried somewhere underneath all the manipulation is a genuinely moving story about a frightened little boy trying to make sense of loss. Unfortunately, the song is far more interested in selling me shoes.

And then we arrive at the payoff. Not the kid's payoff. Not the mother's payoff.

The narrator's payoff.

Because make no mistake, this song is not actually about the child. The child is merely the delivery mechanism. The song is about the narrator.

The kid's mother is dying. The kid is traumatized. The father is missing. The cashier is being publicly recast as the villain for correctly identifying a math problem. Yet somehow all of these people exist primarily to facilitate a spiritual awakening for a guy who was annoyed about standing in line at the mall.

That's quite a promotion.

After helping the boy purchase the shoes, the narrator informs us that he caught "a glimpse of Heaven's love." Fair enough. People help strangers every day and sometimes emerge from the experience with a renewed appreciation for humanity. Had the song stopped there, I might merely dislike it instead of actively resenting it. But NewSong isn't content with a modest lesson.

No, the narrator immediately concludes that God Himself orchestrated the entire event.

Think about the implications of that for a moment. According to the song, the Almighty looked down upon the Earth and decided that the best possible method of reminding a mildly irritated Christmas shopper about the true meaning of the holiday was to give a woman a terminal illness, allow her child to wander unsupervised through a shopping mall, make sure he came up a few dollars short at the register, and then place him in the correct checkout line. That is an astonishing amount of collateral damage for a teachable moment. Couldn't God have simply sent the guy to church? Couldn't He have arranged for the narrator to stumble across a Salvation Army bell ringer? Or volunteer at a food pantry? Or spend an afternoon at a homeless shelter? There are literally thousands of opportunities to learn compassion that do not require placing a family in the emotional equivalent of a wood chipper.

Yet the narrator never questions any of this. Instead, he reaches the conclusion that all of these events happened specifically for him. Not for the child. Not for the mother.

For him.

The more I think about that, the stranger it becomes because the song is ultimately asking us to celebrate an act of kindness that begins and ends at a cash register. The narrator contributes a few dollars toward a pair of shoes, experiences a moment of personal growth, and then exits the story. We never learn what happened to the family. We never learn whether the mother survived the night. We never learn whether the child made it home safely. We never learn whether anybody ever found his father.

The song doesn't care. The lesson has already been delivered. And that, I think, may be the part of "Christmas Shoes" that troubles me most. Beneath all the sentimentality and swelling strings lies a story in which a family's tragedy exists primarily as a vehicle for somebody else's enlightenment. The song presents this as profound. I have always found it oddly self-centered.

Then again, maybe that's because I remain distracted by the image of a little boy sprinting through a dark parking lot carrying a shoebox while every adult in the story congratulates themselves on discovering the true meaning of Christmas.

But wait, I haven’t even discussed the exploitative nature of the music.

It is an indisputable fact that this Christian downer is actively trying to manipulate listeners into sobbing buckets. Nothing about the arrangement is accidental. The tempo drags. The piano tiptoes. The strings creep in at precisely the moment your defenses begin to weaken. The vocals arrive coated in just enough sincerity to suggest that the singer is personally devastated by events he witnessed approximately three minutes earlier while standing in line at the mall. Every musical decision serves the same purpose: suppress critical thought until the listener stops asking questions.

And make no mistake, questions are the enemy. The song cannot survive questions. The moment you ask how the kid got to the mall, the spell begins to break. The moment you ask why nobody seems concerned about an unsupervised child wandering around on Christmas Eve, the spell weakens further. The moment you ask why Jesus apparently maintains strong opinions regarding women's footwear, the entire structure begins swaying like a Jenga tower with half its pieces removed.

NewSong knows this. So rather than allowing the listener a moment to reflect, the song simply keeps pouring on emotion. Every time logic attempts to enter the room, another layer of sentiment arrives to smother it. By the time the final chorus appears, the arrangement has become less a musical accompaniment than an instructional guide informing the audience precisely when they are expected to cry.

And people do cry. Lord, do they cry.

I have watched listeners become visibly emotional during this song. I've seen people defend it passionately. Some genuinely consider it one of the most moving Christmas songs ever recorded. I don't doubt their sincerity for a second. I simply don't understand them.

Of course the song is sad. It contains a dying mother, a frightened child, poverty, terminal illness, Christmas Eve, and the possibility of imminent death. Almost any competent songwriter could assemble those ingredients and produce an emotional reaction. The question isn't whether the song is sad. The question is whether sadness alone is enough to make it meaningful. Simply piling one tragic circumstance on top of another does not automatically create depth any more than stacking slices of bread creates a wedding cake. At some point, storytelling requires something beyond emotional escalation.

"Christmas Shoes" never gets there.

Instead, it relies upon the musical equivalent of a magician frantically waving one hand while hoping nobody notices what the other is doing. The irony is that genuinely moving songs rarely behave this way. The best songs trust the listener. They create space for reflection. They allow emotions to emerge naturally. They don't stand over your shoulder with a bullhorn screaming, "THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU CRY." The song closely resembles Terry Jacks's "Seasons in the Sun"—another candidate for worst song of all time—in its delivery. A dirge song entirely founded on

the emergency lever of sentimental music: the key change. Nothing says "Please continue crying" quite like taking the same melody and moving it up a notch.

But wait. The song has another trick up its sleeve. If the audience hasn't fully surrendered by that point, NewSong reaches for its final weapon: the children's choir.

Because apparently a dying mother, a missing father, a lost child, poverty, Christmas Eve, terminal illness, red slingbacks, divine intervention, and a spiritual revelation at the checkout counter were not quite enough. Somebody in the studio evidently concluded that what this story really needed was a choral army of sad, innocent voices, wavering on the edge of tears, to wear you down.

Children's choirs represent emotional extremes—they can be scary, joyous, or devastating. In this ballad their sole purpose is to crush your damn heart. They are determined to wear down the last remaining pockets of resistance.

By the time the choir arrives, subtlety has been loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the nearest trauma center.

The result is a song that feels less like art and more like emotional waterboarding.

Which brings me to what may be my least favorite aspect of the entire recording. The song mistakes manipulation for honesty, and those are not the same thing. Honest songs earn emotion. Manipulative songs demand it. Honest songs tell a story and trust listeners to arrive at their own conclusions. Manipulative songs begin with the conclusion and then deploy every available trick to drag the audience toward it.

I am a big fan of sad songs generally, but the fact that this song succeeds in jerking your tears is an indictment of its grave, heavy-handed derailment of whatever Christmas joy you may have been experiencing. It exploits poverty to generate a sentimental message and for the narrator's self-congratulatory tone after he gives the boy money.

The song is poverty porn, plain and simple. And what a malevolent portrayal of God. He inflicts needless suffering on others to teach some jerk the true meaning of Christmas? Really?It is true that, sometimes, it is the little things that remind you what the holidays are all about. Like hearing this song on your morning commute and wondering whether you should dive out the window or just set the whole damn car on fire.

This song is a zit on the nape of Christmas’s neck. It’s one of the shiny aluminum trees that horrified Charlie Brown. Had the Whos from Whoville sung this song instead of “Dahoo Dores” at the end of Dr. Suess's “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” the Grinch’s heart would have shrunk into oblivion. If there are elevators in hell, this is the song that plays on loop inside of them.

And let’s not forget the Lifetime movie based on this song that drove Rob Lowe to play grumpy Christmas shopper Drew Peterson who says “I’m untouchable, bitch!” with a straight face and rides around on a motorcycle.

Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

Can we please just give this song a Red Rider BB gun so it can shoot its eye out? Whatever the True Meaning of Christmas is, this is the opposite. Let’s never again let it join in any Reindeer Games.

“The Christmas Shoes” is a soulless song that has been adopted by the megachurch set, the like of which is employed by self-righteous televangelists who offer dime-store platitudes, pep-rally praise, and shallow, self-help sermonizing to a god who only exists to bestow gifts on their charmed followers — a nice house in the suburbs, a new mid-sized sedan, and vacations to the Gulf of Mexico. The song is not written for those who struggle, those who toil, those who suffer. It is written to assure the lucky few that there is no reason to feel guilty for their blessed lives and that those who suffer do so because they do not wave their hands in the air and shed a tear whenever Michael W. Smith takes the stage.

Except God does not reward the faithful with SUVs, He does not punish the wicked with slum apartments, He does not choose a political party, He does not favor the citizens of any nation above others, and He sure as hell does not kill the mommies of little boys so that bored men in checkout lines can feel a little special Christmas glow.

This song exists to let these sad souls know that to be a true servant of the Lord you don’t have to care for the sick, the poor, or the elderly — you only have to praise the Great DJ in the sky. And the request line is always open.

For years, I assumed I was missing something. So many people loved this song that I wondered whether I had simply become too cynical. Maybe I was overanalyzing it. Maybe I was resisting the point. Maybe I had become so focused on missing fathers, wandering children, shoe sizes, and mall logistics that I had overlooked the heart of the story.

Then I listened again.

And again.

And again.

Twenty-five years later, I have reached a different conclusion.

The problem isn't that I've thought about "Christmas Shoes" too much.

The problem is that NewSong hoped I wouldn't think about it at all.

In conclusion, yes, "Christmas Shoes" is guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye, no doubt caused by the sting of stomach acid in your throat. But wait. Fortunately, there is hope.

Years ago, novelty songwriter Robert Lund recorded a parody called "The Christmas Thong," and unlike NewSong, Lund understands exactly what kind of story he is telling. The parody takes the absurd emotional machinery of "Christmas Shoes" and simply nudges it a few inches farther down the road. That's all it takes. Once the shoes become a thong, the entire premise collapses under its own weight.

And that is precisely why the parody works.

Lund recognizes what NewSong never does: the original song is already ridiculous. The child, the dying mother, the missing father, the miraculous checkout-line encounter, the swelling sentimentality, the impossible urgency, the narrator's self-congratulatory revelation—all of it is balanced on a foundation so unstable that a gentle comedic push sends the whole thing tumbling into a ditch.

The brilliance of "The Christmas Thong" is that it doesn't really change the structure of the song. It simply exposes it. By replacing the shoes with an item that no reasonable person would purchase for his dying mother on Christmas Eve, Lund forces listeners to confront the uncomfortable reality that buying footwear for a dying woman wasn't exactly a normal plan to begin with.

In other words, the parody asks the same question I have been asking for twenty-five years:

What the hell is going on here?

The difference is that Lund gets there faster.

I have spent thousands of words analyzing the theology of red slingbacks, the disappearance of Tiny Tim, the negligence of every adult in the mall, the emotional manipulation of the arrangement, the key change, the children's choir, the narrator's astonishing ability to transform someone else's tragedy into his own Christmas epiphany, and the apparent belief that Jesus is standing at the Pearly Gates conducting footwear inspections.

Robert Lund needed four minutes.

That's efficiency.

So if you've made it this far and still feel some lingering affection for "Christmas Shoes," do yourself a favor. Go listen to "The Christmas Thong." Listen carefully. Laugh loudly. Then come back and try to hear the original song again. I suspect you'll discover what I discovered many years ago: once you've seen the absurdity, you can never unsee it.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift Robert Lund ever gave us.

Not the parody itself.

The cure.

Because after twenty-five years of trying to understand "Christmas Shoes," I have finally reached a place of peace. I no longer wonder why the boy is at the mall. I no longer wonder how he got there. I no longer wonder how he gets home. I no longer wonder whether his mother actually wanted the shoes. I no longer wonder why God apparently chose terminal illness as a teaching aid for a grumpy shopper standing in line.

I simply change the station.

Then I put on "The Christmas Thong."

And suddenly Christmas feels merry again. Listen to "The Christmas Thong" here.

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