I always enjoyed the holidays as a kid. The smell of mom’s cooking, the colors of autumn, the homework I’d have to do before I went back to school the next day – why, everything except having to fast on Yom Kippur made that time so, well, special. Tzimmes on the new year, what’s not to like?

As for that other season in December, I could take it or leave it. Half the time, Hannukah was over by the time school got out. And before we could run screaming out the doors and onto the bus for the last time in a month, we’d have to learn something like 8 million Christmas carols – including “Silent Night” in German and “Jingle Bells” in Spanish. If you thought “Jingle Bells” was annoying on a cell phone at Core at 3 in the morning, you never heard 60 third graders sing “Cascabeles, Cascabeles” in the key of tone-deaf major for an hour.

And despite the best intentions of the Dunn Elementary music department, it only added insult to injury when we’d then transition from a Basque version of the Hallelujah chorus into the hallowed anthem of my people: “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.” Five years running, a 200-seat auditorium full of well-meaning Kentuckians would sit transfixed on the tale of how a proud and ancient people fashioned some sacred object of clay, and that with that sacred object, the people would then play.

What a great experience. It would be like going to Bora Bora and explaining Christianity to the natives by singing a song about playing cards.

So I figure, trash the whole song. Or better yet, take out all the lyrics, and replace them with something useful. Like, say, get the present Dunn Elementary fifth grade, bring them up to Evanston and have them do a command performance for all of us. I’m sure there’s at least one member of the Northwestern class of 2013 in there.

Start simple. Maybe with sports – kids love those. Like:

“We played a little football. We won a Big Ten crown.

But then we lost the next year. So fire Jerry Brown.”

See? Because he’s the defensive coordinator, and our defense is the laughingstock of the conference. It’s easy. Try another one, say, a scheduling idea a few of us have had:

“We go to school in winter. It’s way too cold for classes.

Why don’t we go in summer, and not freeze off our –“

Well, you can use any word you like for the end there. It’s a kid’s song, you know, I’m keeping it clean. Maybe take aim at printing costs, that’s safe enough:

“I printed out some pages. I paid the li-bra-ry.

For thirty thousand dollars, you’d think it would be free.”

Yeah, I know, oversimplification. Like I said, this is a kid’s song. What do you want, cost-benefit analysis?

“They fired my professor. She taught my class so well.

They don’t plan to replace her, so they can go to Connecticut.”

Okay, so writing clean is diffcult when you’re talking about NU. Anyway, last of all, here’s a personal hope of mine:

“My roomates’ names are Matthew. And Dave and Bannester.

Our graduation speaker should be Derek Jeter.”

Or Joe Torre, either way.

In any case, I think all those would make a bad song a little better. Have a good holiday, and stay out of public places on New Year’s. The Secretary of Homeland Security is going to tell you to do that anyway. See you in January.