A North Carolina Christmas song. Sort of.

I asked you all to write lyrics to a Tar Heel holiday tune, line by line. Then I hastily tried to arrange them into a legitimate song. Here's what we've got.

Dec 15, 2022

The most fire Christmas album of 2022 (Image by James Curle)

Writing songs is hard. Especially when the song concerns Christmas, a holiday where the message of every tune is, basically: Christmastime is here! That’s it! That’s the motive. If it was not, as Michael Schur recently noted on

Joe Posnanski

’s podcast, you would play Christmas songs in July.

Still, I felt inspired. As I said earlier this week, there are certain sub-genres of music, namely the Kentucky Christmas Song, that really conjure up emotion. In the Bluegrass State Decembers of Kenny Rogers and Phil Ochs, that emotion is a bleak, black lung-inducing nihilism. Sure, Santa is coming kid, but your dad’s drunk again and that coal ain’t gonna mine itself.

So, in that vein, what would a North Carolina Christmas song sound like? For guidance, I turned to a few places, but first to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which basically scans the internet for knowledge and uses artificial intelligence to generate frighteningly cogent responses to prompts. When I asked it to write a North Carolina Christmas song, it awkwardly came up with this:

"North Carolina Christmas"
Verse 1: In the land of the Tar Heel State, Where the skies are bright and blue, It's that time of year again, When Christmas comes into view.
Chorus: North Carolina, North Carolina, Where the snowflakes gently fall, Bringing joy and happiness, To us all.
Verse 2: In the cities and the towns, People bustle all around, Preparing for the holiday, With laughter and with sound.
Chorus: North Carolina, North Carolina, Where the snowflakes gently fall, Bringing joy and happiness, To us all.
Bridge: From the mountains to the coast, We come together as one, Celebrating Christmas time, Underneath the shining sun.
Chorus: North Carolina, North Carolina, Where the snowflakes gently fall, Bringing joy and happiness, To us all.
Outro: North Carolina, North Carolina, Where Christmas comes to life, Bringing love and peace and joy, To our hearts and homes tonight.

This song keeps talking about sunshine and blue skies and gently falling snow. You can’t have both at the same time! Pick one, computer.

I ran it a few more times, and it doesn’t get any more specific than that. No mention of individual towns. No stereotypes like sweet tea and collards. No Cam Newton. No nothin’. Basically, the AI-generated North Carolina Christmas world consists of the mountains, the coast, the “Tar Heel State”, and ambiguous weather. The rest of it is warmed-over warmth and ‘tis the season smarm. It’s… okay.

I ran a few more variations through the chatbot, including one for Petey Pablo (“Petey Pablo’s home state is where the magic happens”) and one that references Mack Brown’s puffy coat (“He wears it to the football game/to keep out the chilly breeze/he wears it to his press conferences/it’s his favorite holiday piece”). I also tried a bah humbug song about how bad sweet tea is, and it was more diss track than Christmas song (“But lately I've been feeling quite queasy/Every time I take a sip, it makes me feel sleazy.”) After several tries, I realized that a computer can crank out lyrics to a pop Christmas song that casually references North Carolina. But you know what that song doesn’t have? (Taps chest). It doesn’t have what’s in here.

Let’s write a song the Luddite way!

So behold, our experiment. Earlier this week, I asked you all to help write a North Carolina Christmas song one line at a time. This was always going to be an exercise in chaos. For one thing, songs aren’t all one-liners. If they were, they’d probably function better as an episode of 30 Rock. There has to be some sort of connective tissue—some setup to make the punchline or the hook work. Hence, I got a lot of great lyrics like “If you’re a reindeer better hope I don’t see ya/Cause you’ll be in my aunts stew down in Conetoe” that I just couldn’t fit in. Also, honestly, you need a decent ratio of Christmas schmaltz to regional specificity. Maybe 25% North Carolina, tops. No matter how you shake it, a Christmas song about this state is still going to be mostly about Christmas.

Also, I wasn’t clear enough in my instructions. Substack arranges comments by algorithm instead of in chronological order by default, so it’s hard to see the line that came right before yours. Plus, many of you made every line rhyme, so it was hard to do an A-B-A-B rhyming scheme. Despite all of that, a few of you truly understood the assignment:

Jobza Guddun @thegoldenspike

Something something winter coat Something something Cheerwine float

Jeremy Markovich @deftlyinane

bring your big class project energy here https://t.co/D3VRuu26AR

You may not be happy about this, but I just decided to pick out the lines that gave me the best chance of creating a legit song, and shot my shot.

Hence, here is “A North Carolina Christmas,” written by the readers of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole and merely arranged by me:

VERSE 1: It's Christmas time in the Tar Heel State
we're so purple we're feeling blue
I could be in the mountains or at the beach
but I'd rather be with you

VERSE 2: It's Christmas time in the Tar Heel State
time to pop a Yuletide brew
please don't let Santa Claus be late
my cigarettes are down to a few

BRIDGE: A little country but always proper
Take off your sweater
Twist it ‘round like a helicopter 

Raise a glass of Cheerwine
to long leaf pines 
and kudzu vines
To yours and mine
we'll all be fine

VERSE 3: It's Christmas time in the Tar Heel State
we’ll spread the cheer with barbecue
I’ll pair some whiskey with my pork
but I'd rather be with you

VERSE 4: It's Christmas time in the Tar Heel State
come winter there’s much to do
we’ll hang our sock, up in Blowing Rock
but I'd rather be with you

but I'd rather be with you

That’s it! That’s the song. If I didn’t include your lyric, it’s only because your line was truly terrible, and you should feel bad for having submitted it.

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Hey, shouldn’t a song have, you know, actual music in it?

Can I sing? Not well. Can I play an instrument? The trombone, and nobody wants to hear that. So here’s my challenge if you wish to accept it. If you want to take a stab at setting this to music, have at it. If you want to forward this to a legit band, let ‘er rip. (For what it’s worth, I’ve had those lyrics set to this song in my brain.) If you want to take the submitted lyrics and form your own version, go for it. There are plenty of great lines in there that either praise or unilaterally condemn your relatives’ cooking, and with enough skill, you could make a song entirely out of that. There’s a lot to work with:

Grandpa Bubba blew a tire, rolling over black walnuts in a sack
And Aunt Sister's stirring Velveeta into her cheese and mac

If you come up with something great sent it to me. If you come up with something truly awful, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SEND IT TO ME. I’ll highlight whatever I get. If I get nothing, we shall never speak of this again. And if you have some better Christmas song themes for the AI chatbot, drop them in the comments. Just don’t expect too much, like, say, snowflakes falling in the shining Carolina sun.