Thursday , March 28 2024
As I heard the lyrics, “It’s that time of year/when the world falls in love….” I felt like screaming, “No, it’s not that time of year yet!”

Christmas Songs on the Radio on Veteran’s Day – Stop the Insanity!

I heard my first Christmas song of the season yesterday morning on the radio. Every year I always mark that occasion as a reminder that I have lots of things to get done, but then I realized that this was Veteran’s Day. Christmas music on Veteran’s Day? There is something wrong with this picture to be sure.

In recent years radio stations here in New York have been going with an “all Christmas music” format, usually starting around Thanksgiving. The theory goes that once the turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie have been ingested, that people are ready for Black Friday (dubbed by retailers as the day after Thanksgiving) to start their Christmas shopping. Ostensibly, people want to get into their cars and hear the songs on the radio or as they walk around the mall. I have come to accept that over time, but now this is getting ridiculous.

It is bad enough that Christmas decorations have been in the stores since late September. It is a little unsettling to see Halloween decorations set up right next to Christmas ones. I don’t know about you, but Santa and Frosty the Snowman just don’t go with witches, skeletons, and jack-o-lanterns. Yes, it perturbs me to see this, but it also is difficult when you have a little kid with you. What messages are being sent into a three year old’s brain when he sees these things?

This meshing of holidays, not to mention the almost complete disregard for Thanksgiving as its own holiday, has been bothersome for a long time to me. Trying to get any Thanksgiving decorations is always a problem. Stuck between the retailers’ dream holidays of Halloween and Christmas, the most you can sometimes find is a pilgrim boy or girl if you’re lucky.

I guess we cannot blame retailers who see this as their biggest time of the year, but it is vexing. So when I am sitting on a line waiting for gas and going around the radio channels, I don’t like hearing that Christmas music so early. As I heard the lyrics, “It’s that time of year/when the world falls in love….” I felt like screaming, “No, it’s not that time of year yet!”

So I am officially bypassing 103.1 FM until after Thanksgiving. I am sure some other stations may start ramming Christmas songs down our throats soon. Maybe I am sounding a bit like Scrooge here, but I want the season to actually be in season. For me that means at least waiting until after Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas and play the music. Even then, by the time we actually get to Christmas Eve, I have heard “Holly, Jolly Christmas” enough times to make my head explode. How’s that for getting into the Christmas spirit? It gets me thinking that Scrooge may have had a point after all. Bah, humbug indeed!

Photo Credit: dreamstime.com

About Victor Lana

Victor Lana's stories, articles, and poems have been published in literary magazines and online. His new novel, 'Unicorn: A Love Story,' is available as an e-book and in print.

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