12 Days of Chipmunks: “Silver Bells”
DECEMBER TWELFTH: CIVILIZATION
Up until this point, every track on Christmas with the Chipmunks has been its own story, with a beginning, middle and end. Up until this point, Ross Bagdasarian Sr. has been holding your hand and walking you through the scary parts. Up until this point, the album makes sense. But not any more. Now, we enter the obscure, the obtuse, the obvious-metaphor-but-only-to-Ross-Bagdasarian-Sr. portion of Christmas with the Chipmunks. “Silver Bells” marks the beginning of an arc that spans nearly half the album, an arc that even scholars such as I have troubles deciphering. What parts are story? What parts are metaphor? What was Bagdasarian really trying to say? We may never reach a definite conclusion, but we each have our theories. Mine, of course, are the most correct, and I have lost a great many friends trying to convince them that they’re wrong/idiots. Their loss. I’m great.
On to the review.
“Silver Bells” is a beautiful song. In my opinion, there are not nearly enough Christmas songs about city life. In fact, I think “Silver Bells” might be the only one. There are plenty about towns, but only one about cities. People must be averse to city-themed Christmas songs for some reason. Probably because cities are so closely associated with commercialism. And as we all know, any Christmas song involving commercialism has to be about how it’s bad.
But is that the message that Bagdasarian was trying to convey? It seems unlikely to me. There are far more than enough Christmas songs about how not enough Christmas songs are about Christmas. No, he wanted to say something more. But what? I myself had pondered this for years, listening to the song over and over again, trying to find the loose thread that would unravel the mystery, finding nothing but smooth fabric. I just didn’t get it. Dave was singing peacefully, the Chipmunks sang harmony, no one was arguing, the Chipmunks weren’t acting malevolent…
That’s when it hit me. I had been searching for some hidden clue in the lyrics or the music. I never thought to look for something that wasn’t there. Why weren’t the Chipmunks arguing? Why wasn’t Dave struggling to keep them in check? Why were woodland creatures singing a song about the city in the first place?
It seems so obvious now, doesn’t it? Dave, at last, has won the battle against the egotistical Chipmunks. By showing them everything good about civilized life, it seems he’s finally convinced them to stop acting on their animal impulses and start behaving like normal children. As you may remember, in “The Chipmunk Song”, the Chipmunks could “hardly stand the wait” until Christmas. Now, they’re content simply with the knowledge that “soon it will be Christmas Day”. And before you remind me that the Chipmunks in “The Chipmunk Song” were a metaphor for addiction, while the Chipmunks in “Silver Bells” are literal animals and the two should not be compared, I will remind you that chipmunks have been a symbol of addiction—just as lions are a symbol of bravery and ravens death—for over five hundred years*. So whether or not these are the same Chipmunks (and some (incorrect) theories state that they are), they’ve still been brainwashed against their very essence. Their natural Chipmunk instincts have been completely wiped away. And whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.
*During the Ming Dynasty, scurries of Siberian chipmunks would often infest stores of opium as they were being transported from the Xiyu region to the imperial palace. Zoologists believe the opium had a catnip-like effect on the chipmunks. The infestations became such a nuisance that Emperor Zhu Jianshen ordered the complete extermination of the species; as he was successful, the “catnip” theory can never be tested.
