The Simpsons is sometimes wrongly credited with introducing the Batman Smells parody, but in fact it predates the show by at least twenty years. Probably much older than that, it was a favorite carol on school buses in the early 1970s and may have originally been associated with Batman (1966). The song even exists in the DC Animated Universe; The Joker sings it in his very first appearance on Batman: The Animated Series, while breaking out of Arkham on Christmas Eve!
Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
Batmobile lost a wheel
And Joker got away
Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
Batmobile lost a wheel
And Joker got away
On Saturday Night Live, Paul Simon and Steve Martin did something similar to Simon & Garfunkel's classic "Seven O'Clock News/Silent Night", with Simon singing "Silver Bells" as Martin gives a depraved monologue about the increasingly dysfunctional and appalling meaning Christmas has for him:
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
Dressed in holiday style
In the air there's the feeling of Christmas
People passing, children laughing
And for mile after mile
On every street corner you'll hear
Silver bells
Silver bells
It's Christmas time in the city
Ding-a-ling
Hear them ring
Soon it will be Christmas Day
Last night my child looked up at me and said
"Uncle Steve?"
He didn't know I was his father
And I didn't know for sure either
I just assumed I was
I'd had his mother so many times
And in so many differеnt ways
The odds were with mе
Anyway, he looked up at me and said
"What does Christmas mean to you?"
And I said
Christmas is a time for giving
A time for receiving
A time for eggnog and rum
A time for cutting down trees and hanging plastic doodads on them
And watching them die slowly in your living room
Catch fire and burn down your house and all your possessions
It's a time for buying things that haven't sold all year long
Wrapping them up in shiny paper
And giving them to your friends
Who return them and find out you got it on sale
And they can only exchange them for things of equal value
Like charcoal briquettes or matchbooks with other peoples' names on them
A time for giving your wife that special coat she always wanted
Those seals didn't need their fur anyway
What do they want it for they're dead already
It's a time for eggnog and brandy
And driving home on icy streets
Accidentally nudging the car next to you off the bridge
Into the frozen river
Watching the car sink
Seeing the bubbles float up under the water
(Silver bells)
It's time to sip an eggnog martini and think about the poor
(Silver bells)
Talk of feeding the naked and clothing the hungry
(It's Christmas time in the city)
A time to get Christmas cards from all your friends at Consolidated and Allied and Acme
(Ding-a-ling)
A time for seeing all those happy children sitting on Santa's lap in Toyland
(Hear them ring)
(Soon it will be Christmas Day)
Thinking to yourself, Hmm
Maybe I'll be a Santa next year
Twelve years old is not so far from eighteen
Maybe I should be laying a little groundwork for the future
It's a time for parties at the office with eggnog and vodka
Telling your boss what you really think of him
While he gets a perfect Xerox of your wife's rear end…
In the novel “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” (the IRL inspiration for the 1990s show), the Baltimore PD Homicide Unit have their own version of "Deck the Halls", which, as befitting people who's job it is to investigate a city with 234 murders a year, is extremely dark. The author says that at least this Xmas they didn't decorate the office tree with cardboard angels, their faces supplied by the morgue photos of the year's murder victims.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa-lalalalalalalala,
Talk to us and if you're willing, fa-lalalalalalalala,
Tell us who did all this killing, fa-lalalalalalalala,
Tell us how you want forgiveness, fa-lalalalalalalala,
You don't know we've got a witness, fa-lalalalalalalalala,
Talk to us you've nothing to lose, fa-lalalalalalalalala,
Why is there blood on your gym shoes? fa-lalalalalalalalala,
Want to make a good impression? fa-lalalalalalalalala,
Make yourself a fast confession! fa-lalalalalalalalala!
Animaniacs did a riotous send-up of "Noel", each verse leading to a different pun in the chorus, and the last one lampshading the entire thing and apologizing to the viewer for ruining the song.
To spell Santa's name is easy to do
You write S-A-N-T and another "A", too
But no "L", no "L", Santa's name has no "L"
And he won't be too pleased if you don't learn to spell
Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch water from the well
But when neither one could find it, Jill started to yell
No well, no well, can't believe there's no well!
We walked all the way here and I'm mad can't you tell!
Captain Ahab took his crew, his harpoon, and set sail
And he called out to ships...
Have you seen the white whale?
No whale, no whale, no, we ain't seen no whale!
Saw a couple of dolphins...
And a big yellowtail!
If you've listened to this tune, then you probably can tell
That you've heard it before. It's a song you know well.
Know well, know well, it's a song you know well,
And we've ruined it completely, so we all say, "Oh, well."
Oh, well, oh, well, we'll just say fare thee well!
Merry Christmas to you and a joyous Noel!
An exceptionally gruesome rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas from Scrubs is about the experience of being on-call in the emergency room on Christmas eve:
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Twelve beaten children,
Eleven drive-by shootings,
Ten frozen homeless,
Nine amputations,
Eight burn victims,
Seven strangled shoppers,
Six random knifings,
Five suicides,
Four beaten wives,
Three ODs,
Two shattered skulls,
And a drunk who drove into a tree.