Dion Figueroa | Correspondent
If your childhood was anything like mine, your Christmas mornings consisted of waking up at 7 A.M. on the dot. After a restless night spent imagining what gifts Santa would bring you, you’d creep out of your room and run to see if your dreams had come true. You’d sit in front of the bright lights of the Christmas Tree listening to the classics while waiting for your parents to wake up.
The experience and idea of Christmas was great, and everything around it, but somewhere along the way certain aspects of the “Christmas Spirit” began to rub me the wrong way. Specifically, I passionately HATE Christmas music.
Now before you say it, I am not a Grinch. I’m really not. But there is something about hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” for the umpteenth time that makes me cringe. I used to love it. Hearing the soothing but deep and vibrant voice of Nat King Cole accompanied by flashing colorful Christmas lights excited me, and there is still a piece of me that gets very nostalgic when experiencing that, but the rest of the holiday music catalog could disappear today and I would not miss it.
Pinpointing an exact moment where I began to feel this way is difficult, but it most likely happened sometime in my late teens. I’ve spent the majority of my life working in some aspect of the retail space since I was 15 years old, and have had the ‘pleasure’ of hearing Christmas music throughout my holiday work shifts for the majority of the eight years following. Starting a week or so removed from Thanksgiving, until the end of December, Christmas music is everywhere and it is virtually impossible to avoid.
But why? Is it not possible to mix the occasional Christmas song into the store’s normal Top 40 rotation? Why do I have to feel as if the ‘Christmas Spirit’ is being shoved down my throat? I can’t be the only person to feel this way.
Another thing that tends to upset me when hearing holiday music is the fact that no matter how large of a catalog of holiday music there is, we as a society narrow our playlists to the same small sample of songs. In the last twenty years have there not been enough holiday ‘hits’ to finally take Ms. Carey off the top of the Christmas music playlist?
I’m not a lost cause, trust me, but there needs to be a serious rethinking about how we handle the topic of our holiday music. If there is any hope out there for the Christmas music skeptics such as myself, there are a few things that need to happen. We need to seriously rethink the date range in which we see the playing of holiday music as acceptable.
Play it non-stop around Black Friday, as I understand we need to be reminded of the ‘holiday spirit’ as we trample each other, and then maybe the week before Christmas through Christmas. Also, either mix-in songs with Top 40, or we need a national initiative to create some new ‘classics.’ Lastly, ban Mariah’s voice from holiday radio, and then maybe you can convert even the biggest skeptics like myself.
