Harry Stewart’s Christmas song will make you smile

Yogi Yorgesson is back on the radio singing his hit holiday song, “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas.”

You instantly recognize his “comically exaggerated Swedish American accent.” Yogi began his “career” as a radio character created by Harry E. Stewart in 1932.

Stewart’s big break in the entertainment industry came in 1949, when he wrote “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” for Capitol Records. The 45-rpm recording featured “Yingle Bells” with twisted lyrics on the B-side. 

By mid-December, both sides had landed on the Billboard Best-Selling Pop Singles Top 20 list, and the week before Christmas, both sides were in the Top 10. Right after Christmas, “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” reached Number 5, and the single became one of Capitol’s permanent hits – being reissued virtually every year.

 

Stewart was still riding the crest in 1956, when he died in a single-vehicle crash at age 47. He recorded more than 40 songs for Capitol. 

“I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” was memorialized in 1989, when it was selected as one of the top 16 Christmas novelty songs of all-time for a holiday season CD produced by Barry Hansen, who is known professionally as Dr. Demento, an American radio broadcaster and “record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonography.”

Dr. Demento thinks Stewart’s “most famous song is hysterical.” Judge for yourself from these selected lyrics:

 

Oh, I yust go nuts at Christmas

On that yolly holiday

I’ll go in the red like a knucklehead

Cuz I’ll squander all my pay.

 

I look at nightgowns for my wife

Those black ones trimmed in red

But I won't know her size and so

She’ll get a carpet sweeper instead.

 

I look at my watch and midnight is near

I think I’ll sneak off for a cold glass of beer

Down at the corner, the crowd is so merry

I end up by drinking about 12 Tom & Yerry

 

Yust before Christmas dinner, I relax to a point

Then relatives start swarming all over the yoint

On Christmas, I hug and I kiss my wife’s mother

The rest of the year we don’t speak to each other.

 

Oh, I’m so glad Merry Christmas comes yust once a year.

  

(A Tom and Jerry is a traditional Christmastime cocktail in the United States. It is a variant of eggnog with brandy and rum added and served hot, usually in a mug or a bowl.)