Country music has its fair share of beloved – unabashedly country – Christmas songs that encompass the warm, familial, snow-capped feelings of holidays in the South. “Christmas in Dixie,” anyone? How about “Tennessee Christmas”? The genre has those songs that everyone listens to when no one else is around—their tinsel-wrapped guilty pleasure like “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” And then there are the songs those neighbors crank up when they’re half-naked, poking the burn pile from the plastic lawn chair the day after Thanksgiving. This list is those songs. I might have just heard them from across the holler.
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Three Redneck Country Christmas Songs
Joe Diffie, “LeRoy the Redneck Reindeer”: What happens when Santa’s trusty nose-glowing guide Rudolph gets sick? He calls his country cousin LeRoy to swoop in and tow the sleigh.
Lyrics include: It was Leroy the Redneck Reindeer hooked to the front of the sleigh| Delivering toys to all the good ol’ boys and girls along the way| He’s just a down-home party animal two steppin’ all across the sky| He mixes jingle bells with the rebel yell and made history that night
Given the song also says Santa’s bag is wrapped in the Dixie flag, I’m not sure it’s politically correct. But Bubba, by the bonfire, won’t care. (No offense to boys named Bubba. My son goes by Bubba, too.) Between a reference to a neon moon and scootin’ a hoof, there even seems to be a Brooks & Dunn nod.
Jeff Foxworthy, “Redneck 12 Days of Christmas”: If the redneck population had a king, I’m pretty sure it would be Jeff Foxworthy. And this song sets the tone for the properly improper redneck holiday. The first lyrics include “woooooo” and “Walmart.” He even sings about flannel shirts, big mud tires, hunting dogs, and some car parts.
No joke, this whole album was a yuletide smash. Foxworthy dropped Crank It Up: The Music Album in 1995, and “Redneck 12 Days of Christmas” was the first single and reappeared on the country Christmas charts annually for nearly a decade.
Ray Stevens, “Redneck Christmas”: Those in search of a serious redneck Christmas song on this list – or maybe any list- are out of luck. Stevens’ “Redneck Christmas” dives into a foot-stompin’ bowl of opossum stew. He also works in references to chewing tobacco, eating rabbits, red bows on hound dogs, and trees of toilet paper.
(Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
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