Well, as B.L., Ella, and some others of my relatives would say, “It’s snowing to beat the band!” I was never sure what that really meant, so I looked it up in the source and fount of all information: the Internet.
Michael Quinion, on his website, World Wide Words http://www.worldwidewords.org gives several possible explanations, most of which are Irish in origin, then says in summation, “I’m fairly sure that to beat the band originally meant that you sang or played or shouted louder even than an orchestra and so, by later extension, came to refer to anything superlative. Just for once, the common-sense explanation may be the correct one, and there’s no need to invoke Irish towns or Irish storytellers, let alone banshees.”
So, there you have it. In at least this man’s opinion, the phrase has no spectacular beginnings; rather it just means what it means. How novel that idea is!
We like to attach long, exciting explanations to just about anything in order to gussy things up a bit, and are very keen, it seems, on passing along urban legends via email and in face-to-face gossip. Everything from Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo of CBS Television fame in the 50’s and 60’s) to plastic containers (supposedly containing poisons that are released when they are microwaved) is the subject of these urban legends, which seem to continue to have a life of their own even though they’ve been proven false time after time.
When a person’s fantasy of life becomes more realistic and exciting than the reality, that person needs a reality check in the worst way and has issues beyond the norm. Real life is, when properly experienced, so much more than the artificiality of fantasy that there should be no comparison. Try it sometime.
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