Christmas Rant: All The Damn Music

So I decided to take apart Christmas from my point of view here in the blogosphere. And yes, I have issues with Christmas, sorry. So Happy Birthday, Jesus, and here we go, getting all ranty about the music of Christmas.

I’ll admit up front that not all Christmas music is bad. Some is downright inspiring. In my view of things, however, that subset of music is pretty small, and most of it is much older than I am, at least the versions I prefer to hear. Suffice it to say that if you collected all the Christmas songs I don’t mind listening to, they probably would not fill a CD.

One part of the season I don’t understand – musically – is the tendency for a radio station to switch formats just for the season. This results in jarring experiences in places like my car. I climb in, fire it up, and expect to hear Disturbed or some equally awesome head-banging music that will motivate me long enough to stay awake and get where I’m headed. Instead, I get heinous Christmas song that to me is nails down the chalkboard, or audio Sominex. I worry I’ll be awakened by an MP, car nudged up against the curb, a trail of drool down the steering wheel.

Another pain in my ass is stores that pipe in uninterrupted Christmas music. The shopping experience is bad enough to have to endure the saccharine tones that fill the air in between the ravenous flailing of arms and hands that is Christmas shopping. Even worse, everyone seems to do that. I can understand Sears, WalMart, and other places. But Home Depot? Really? That takes a huge edge off the thrill I get every time I look at power tools, and that sucks.

The theme here is that during some stuff I can’t escape, the shit follows me like a virus, drilling into my ears in a painful way. Once in the middle of the suffering, This is a short list that enumerates the most egregious examples of Christmas music:

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” – This song by Band Aid I’ve ranted on before, and nothing has changed except for my level of hate for this tune. It sucked ass in the ’80s, and it sucks worse now. Especially given that the purpose of the whole damn thing was to raise money to help out largely Muslim nations in Africa. How ironic.

“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” – This is just a musical crime against humanity. This may have been funny once or twice upon release. But even an entire year in between hearings doesn’t ease the discomfort of hearing it. Again.

“Wonderful Christmastime” – This piece by Paul McCartney just irritates the piss out of me for some reason. Enough repititions has me ready to murder kittens.

Finally, the catch-all category, where I state that I’ll vomit along with anything sung by Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, and Mariah Carey.

Now that I’m done with this one, I have to go shop. With the car radio off. Wearing earplugs.