Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses

Patty Donahue was new wave's sarcastic, sexy film noir doll

The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" has always had a special place in my heart. It gets spun routinely by holiday music stations at Xmas time and was even covered by The Spice Girls in 1998, but it still isn't on many peoples' list for favorite Christmas songs if it's on their radar at all.

The Waitresses were a new wave pop band from Akron, Ohio when Akron was the center of the future of the pop rock universe. Besides obvious standard bearers Devo, the town launched the careers of Rachel Sweet, Liam Sternberg, The Bizarros, Pere Ubu, and The Dead Boys. The Waitresses were a middle range band, pop to power pop with a crisp skinny tie edge that broke through with the single from their first album, "I Know What Boys Like."

The group's songs were written primarily by guitarist Chris Butler, a songwriter with a wry sense of humor and an affinity for songs that seemed to cry out for a female voice. One day, the story goes, he stood up in a bar midday and inquired if there was a female singer who would like to try singing a song he'd written for a demo. A voice at the back said 'Uh-huh.' That was Patty Donahue.

Patty Donahue was a large part of the reason for The Waitresses' success, her detached attitude providing much of the basis for the group's new wave vibe. Dripping with sarcasm, Donahue sounds like what might have happened if Daria Morgendorfer and Jane Lane formed a band as a school project to play the prom. It doesn't hurt that many of Butler's songs suggest a female perspective, like "No Guilt," a song about meeting a series of challenges alone after a breakup--"It wasn't the end of the world" sings Donahue matter-of-factly.

Patty was that girl a certain type of guy dreams about at around nineteen or twenty years of age. A sexy brunette, tight lipped, chain smoker, smile that can easily elaborate into a sneer, pencil skirts and high heels, the girl next door with an attitude. The kind of girl who can cut someone to the quick with a well placed word ("Sucker!") and a quippy gesture.

Chris Butler: "This is what she brought to the party: She was very smart. She was very funny. She was a very good actress. Great sense of humor, great timing. This was not the world's greatest vocalist, but she could get inside these lines and act them out, with a cigarette, and be my kind of favorite 1930s tough broad in all those Depression-era movies. Like those great, great characters - Veronica Lake, Myrna Loy, Lauren Bacall. She could do that kind of tough, tough, been-there, done-that, you-can't-fool-me kind of woman." ('How an Obscure Eighties Punk Band Created a Christmas Classic' by John Petrick, The Star online, December 22, 2005).

The cover of The Waitresses' debut album, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? features a real photo from Patty's graduation day, smiling with friends in her cap and gown. There's a suggestion that this (the songs) is what happens when all that youthful enthusiasm hits the real world.

Butler left for New York, where he ended up signed to ZE Records. He wired Patty $50 to come to New York to join the band if she chose to do so. She did.

"Christmas Wrapping" was put together in 1981, while The Waitresses were on tour promoting "I Know What Boys Like" and their forthcoming debut album. ZE Records was putting together a Christmas album by their janky, atonal roster and they asked each band or act to come up with a Christmas song. For a band that was toiling on tour, the couple of days taken to record the track was a brief diversion. When Christmas season approached, the song began to get radio airplay, especially on college stations and radio that was open to playing more pop-oriented new wave records.

"We had to play the song up until, like, June," said Butler, "and we had to capitalize on it - `Hi, this is our new album. We're the people who did that song back at Christmas,'" (Petrick)

Patty, a tough Irish Catholic from Cleveland's West side, starts off with "Bah Humbug, now that's too strong!/'Cause it is my favorite holiday" and we know that we're going to get it straight from this salty lady. She's not down on Christmas, far from it. But she is weary with the weight of her busy lifestyle that has precluded her forming a relationship with a certain gent she's seen about town throughout the year. And so she joins the legion of people through the years who have yearned to take a year off the Yuletide celebration and try to digest what has happened in the previous year.

And it isn't that selfish Christmas With the Kranks thing where we take a year off Christmas so we can get away to a warmer climate and chill while weaseling out of all human interactions that require us to recognize the meaning of the season ('Mankind was my business!'). Nope. It's just a request, a prayer, really, for a little respite in what has become a season of madness.

Also, don't forget, this is the dawn of the eighties. Before social media.

So deck those halls, trim those trees

Raise up cups of Christmas cheer

I just need to catch my breath

Christmas by myself this year

It's maybe the same impulse that leads us to want just a simpler, less commercial holiday, one that honors our personal lives even as we honor the spirit of giving and seek a little peace for ourselves and those we hold dearest.

The music that accompanies this performance is not at all serene. Instead, it gives us a visceral sense of the roller coaster ride that Patty's life has become, all our lives have become. Bassist Tracy Wormworth and former Television drummer Billy Ficca, along with Butler's guitar, create a more mainstream version of the typical anarchic ZE avant-dance-funk, just a little askew somehow. Wormworth was reportedly inspired by Chic's "Good Times".

Things unravel further with the Albert Ayler meets Skatalites riff unleashed by Mars Williams between the verses and accentuating the chorus. Mars was a former member of avant garde jazz group NRG Ensemble and a founding member of acid jazz group Liquid Soul. After The Waitresses broke up he joined The Psychedelic Furs until 1989. After an initial statement on which Williams multitracks himself playing alto and tenor sax to sound like a whole section, trumpet player Dave Buck joins in, creating an atmosphere that is high celebration bordering on chaos.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas

But I think I'll miss this one this year

The final verse delivers our payoff, our O. Henry moment when all will be revealed. Patty rushes home to her solitary celebration, miniature turkey in the oven, when she realizes that she forgot something important for her dinner. She dresses and shuffles off to the all night grocery where she meets--who else--her Hallmark movie crush she's been unable to connect with all year. And he's there buying the very same thing that she forgot:

When what to my wondering eyes should appear

In the line is that guy I've been chasing all year

'Spending this one alone, ' he said

'Need a break, this year's been crazy'

I said 'Me too, but why are you

You mean you forgot cranberries too?'

Then suddenly we laughed and laughed

Caught on to what was happening

Cranberries. That's what brings us together. Cue Mars Williams sax riff.

The Waitresses never managed to chart in the U.S., but their two singles did become part of the larger culture and can still be heard today. Their two albums, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? and Bruiseology, are really good and can still be purchased or streamed. You can't get through a holiday season without hearing "Christmas Wrapping" multiple times.

The band broke up under the pressure of recording their second album, and Patty Donahue quit performing, becoming a talent scout at MCA Publishing and then an A&R rep for MCA Records.

In the mid-nineties Donahue contracted lung cancer, and Butler got back in touch with the woman who had brought his songs to life. "I found out she was sick, through a friend. I immediately called her. We kind of kissed and made up." The two even talked of doing a reunion show at Christmas, but Patty was gone by then, succumbing on December 9, 1996 at the age of 40.

Since then I'm always a little sad when I hear this song, even though it still has the power to cheer me immensely. The song's vibrancy and Patty's spirited vocal performance make this an Xmas favorite, and I raise the glass to Chris Butler and Patty Donahue and to the exuberance of youth and the joy of being in love with the world and hoping that everyone gets their deepest seasonal wishes.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas

Couldn't miss this one this year

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