Rock and roll rhetoric: Merry Xmas Everybody

Are you hanging up the stocking on your wall?
Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall?
Do you ride on down the hillside
In a buggy you have made?
When you land upon your head
Then you’ve been slayed.

Merry Xmas Everybody (Holder, Lea), Slade

A raucous, joyous Christmas favourite and a great example of enallage. Enallage is, essentially, a deliberate grammatical mistake.

Instead of being slain by the sledge/buggy you’ve been slayed … which is also a handy pun (paronomasia) on Slade.

It’s an effect that can be effective and annoyingly memorable, think of those insurance-vending meerkats: “Simples!”

Merry Xmas Everybody was Slade’s Christmas single in 1973. According to Wikipedia, it was voted the UK’s favourite Christmas song, but is hardly ever played in America.

So, here it is. Merry Christmas…

https://youtu.be/XjBG1ZQnRYQ