Holly Cole has been associated with Christmas her entire life - literally.
Her parents named her "Holly" because she was born on Nov. 25, exactly a month before Christmas. The first recording she ever made was a vinyl single of The Christmas Blues; and ever since, the 33-year-old singer has become a perennial holiday favorite. She performs two sold-out shows tomorrow night in the Arden Theatre in St. Albert.
"I'm resigned to it now," Cole said in a recent phone interview. "But it's ironic - I have a real love-hate relationship with Christmas."
She hates it for the "obvious" reasons: the commercialism, the greed, the sappiness, the memories of mom slaving in the kitchen a week ahead of time to prepare the Christmas feast only to have it all scarfed down in 10 minutes ...
"I associate it with a lot of stress," Cole said. "You don't have to be Catholic to feel guilty at Christmas, I think.
"But I also love it. I'm kind of a workaholic. And at Christmas, everything stops. You can't work - forget it. Nothing's happening. So it forces me to stop and it forces me to pay attention to what is actually kind of a priority in life. I love my family intensely, and I really don't hardly get to spend any time with them. And at Christmas I do, because the whole world stops."
Cole promises she's not going come across anything like Rita MacNeil's Christmas Show, opting instead for a more obscure repertoire. Instead of Walking in a Winter Wonderland or Silver Bells, you'll hear songs like the 2,000 Miles, by the Pretenders, Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby and, naturally, The Christmas Blues, plus a whole lot of non-Christmas music.
"My Christmas shows are a little bit lighter than my usual shows, which are kind of dark," Cole said. "They're not really light, but I like to poke fun at Christmas, poke fun at the whole notion of Santa Claus and use sexual innuendo. I think people sort of relax with that.
"I think one of the reasons why it's so popular is that people share my feelings about Christmas - it's awful and it's great."
Fans may also notice that it's not the "Holly Cole Trio" any more. Aside from the fact that it's now a quintet, Cole wants to distance herself from the jazz crooner image, which she's started to do on her last two albums: Temptation, a collection of Tom Waits covers, and her most recent release, It Happened One Night (no, it's not a Christmas album; she recorded it this year during one steamy summer evening in Montreal).
With cigars, martinis and swingers clubs making a comeback, there's a lounge music trend afoot - which is exactly why Cole wants nothing to do with it.
"It's so in vogue now that I can't do it," she said. "I saw it coming and I went, OK, this is the time to bail. We were never really lounge anyway, but there was definitely the long black gloves, the image, and I really didn't want to be pigeon-holed."
Cole goes into the studio Jan. 1 to start work on her next album (she wasn't kidding about being a workaholic) - and it probably won't be jazz standards.
"I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be like yet, but it's not going to be `Holly Cole: Disco Queen.' I'm not making an about-face. I'm just going little bit more in a popular direction."
All we know for sure is that Holly will be back for Christmas next year.
