The gang wrap up their side trip through the shoals of holiday novelty songs with a huge hit from 1948 it’s author characterized as a silly little thing the nation-wide popularity of which he just couldn’t understand. A second grade music teacher in Smithtown, New York, Donald Gardner whipped off the song in 30 minutes in 1944 after he noticed that almost every kid in a class he was talking to about what they wanted for Christmas was missing at least one tooth and were answering with a cute lisp. A rep from the Witmark company heard him playing it at a teachers conference in 1947 and the rest is history. None other than the inimitable “King of Corn” Spike Jones and his City Slickers layed it down first in December 1947, and it was soon after performed by The Satisfiers on Perry Como’s radio show. Everybody seems to have recorded it since, for better or worse, straight and parodied, from the sublime to the ridiculous: Danny Kaye, The Andrews Sisters, George Strait, The Platters, Nat King Cole, The Chipmunks, The Three Stooges, Dread [sic] Zeppelin, Homer and Jethro, the Count on Sesame Street, drag queen RuPaul, Cledus T. Judd, and even Melissa Lynn on Alberet’s Showcase. We’d better stop there…