Best Christmas Songs -Slashed Wrists This Christmas

Since Sunday is the worst day in the week for me,  I thought I’d post a song about suicide in my best Christmas songs list. For the third year in a row “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” is on my holiday playlist.  I mean, who doesn’t like a Christmas song about suicide?

Slashed Wrists This Christmas – Gruff Rhys

Oh sure, the holidays are all holly and jolly but where are the songs for the manic depressants? The songs for people like me who suffer from a mental illness or two? (Last count I was at four. I’m like a Vegas buffet of mental illness). Well look no further. “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” by Gruff Rhys is on An Alternative Christmas, a new BBC compilation album. The song was originally released on Rhys’ EP Atheist Christmas.

You’ll never confuse “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” with say “Rudolph” or “Silver and Gold.” I mean, just look at some of the lyrics.

“Slashed wrists this Christmas.

Blood streams down your fingers.”

And

“I walked you to the infirmary, the cuts were deep so they sent you to sleep.

It was 1987, you had just been diagnosed with manic depression.

“You said, ‘Next time I do it, I’m gonna do it well’. I just told you to go to hell.”

Not really lyrics in the same family of say “Jingle Bells.”

What I like about the song is the way it sounds. It’s a really cool sounding song. I can’t tell what all the lyrics are because I’ll be damned if I can understand what Gruff Rhys is singing. But those first two lines are great.

A Black Christmas

To me, “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” is gallows humor. Certainly not a pretty white Christmas but a dark black Christmas. The dark underbelly of the holiday season.

Ho Ho Ow.

If you’re looking for alternative Christmas songs this year, you can’t get much more alternative than a Christmas song about suicide.

Get a copy of “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” this holiday season. Just the song. Not the real life slashed wrists. Let me tell you from experience, it’s no fun.