Friday fanfare: Tom Lehrer’s holiday songs

The great Tom Lehrer wrote two great seasonal songs. The first was simply called “A Christmas Carol,” an ode to the commercialization of the holiday to the tune of several favorites. The second was a Hanukkah song, “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” which Lehrer wrote because he felt there was a dearth of songs for that Jewish holiday — mostly, he observed, because most of the Jewish songwriters were too busy writing Christmas carols…..