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!
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Article comments
1 - Ronnie Lankford, Jr.
I enjoyed the article. I do find it interesting that despite the fact that most everyone complains about early Christmas music, the stores and radio stations start playing it early anyway. Something--marketing surveys--must say that it's effective. Kind of like negative campaign advertising: no one likes it, but apparently it works.
Cheers
Ronnie
2 - Dr Dreadful
Some years ago, during the run-up to Christmas, I worked a temporary assignment in an office with a woman who insisted on listening to the local "soft rock" station all day long. This was bad enough, but lamentably, the station had an "all Christmas, all the time" policy beginning immediately after Thanksgiving. Exacerbating this was that they only had about 12 Christmas songs on their playlist, which repeated endlessly at intervals of about 90 minutes.
The upshot of this was that after a few weeks I was wondering (a) whether any Nazi concentration camp gas chambers were still in working order, and (b) if they were, whether there might be a case for shepherding Burl Ives, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Bobby Helms, Mannheim Steamroller, Bruce Springsteen and all the other serial offenders into them, locking the door and tossing the Zyklon-B down the chimney.
I was frankly thankful when the assignment ended a couple of weeks before the holiday and I could stop having genocidal thoughts about it.
And to be fair, there are a few songs out there on the subject of military service members being absent during the holiday season - "I'll Be Home for Christmas" is one such - so perhaps playing Christmas songs on Veterans' Day isn't so inappropriate after all.