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ephemera suggested Christmas music - favourites, pet peeves, and when should it start and stop.A-HA!
I was in Sainsbury's on Tuesday, and by the time I had worked my way through the fruit and veg section I was ready to kill, and Johnny Mathis was warbling about When A Child Is Born.
This is Just Wrong.
Now, I don't object to Christmas music on principle. There are many jolly tunes, most particularly Santa Baby (preferably the Eartha Kitt version, because nobody does golddigger sexkitten like Eartha Kitt), Santa Claus is Coming To Town (Springsteen), Rocking around the Christmas Tree (?) (I used to know a tap routine to this one), Driving Home for Christmas (Chris Rea) and Merree Christmas Everybodee (or something like it, by Slade). Why yes, I did grow up in the 1970s. Less cheerful but also worthy are Last Christmas (by Wham), Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (by Judy Garland, accept no substitutes), Lonely This Christmas (Mud) and of course, O Holy Night (by Nsync, no other version is as good) (once, once, I actually heard this in a UK shop, and stood there happily until it was done). And I do not object to actual Christmas carols sung by choirs. But crooning is *not* appropriate for Christmas carols (and the little bloody drummer boy does not count as a carol anyway).
However. These tunes should be leavened through the day like little hints of tinsel. They should not be played non-stop throughout December. They CERTAINLY should not be played before December 1st.
There are incredible numbers of hideous, schmaltzy, monstrously sentimental Christmas songs around. It has been a long time since I enjoyed listening to Chris de Burgh wittering on about a spaceman. I have never, do you hear me, never wanted to hear Perry Como sing about anything involving chestnuts or snowmen or reindeer. There's a horrible sincerity that too many American singers bring to all this appalling crap that renders it unforgiveable. A little irony goes a long way, guys. Bing may sing about a White Christmas, and that's your lot.
You know the culprits. You know what they are. Sometimes I've been driven out of shops by the ghastly noise. And these excrescences are visited upon the hapless staff in supermarkets across the land, solidly, from the beginning of December. It is inhumane. One day, a checkout cashier will snap and rampage through the store with a cosh made of £1 coins in a felt stocking and destroy all the festive seasonal merchandise. And who shall blame her?
If the good Christmas songs were sprinkled across the month in a delicate way, and the bad ones featured only during the seven days leading up to Christmas, they might (I suppose, grudgingly) enhance the experience of fighting through trolleys in search of the last packet of stuffing in the shop. Except for the ones that should be incinerated, of course.
That's it.
(*whew!*)
Do you know, I think my Christmas icon might be quite appropriate here.
If you'd like to fill in any of the empty slots, go here.
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I looooooooooooooooooooove Christmas music, to a possible unhealthy degree. Now I've turned off the SeSa playlist, I'm on all cheesy Christmas tracks all the time. Although I do hate that bloody Chris de Burgh song about the spaceman. GAH. Although, not as much as I hate 'Windy Night'. Fortunately, even though it has an angel in it, it gets a lot less play time.
And I have to feel sorry for people working in shops where they have an single Christmas CD that they play for a month and a half. Nice for me, wandering happily around the shops, grim for them.
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I do feel very sorry for the staff - even a mix of my favourite Christmas songs would drive me to madness when repeated all day and every day.
They could, instead, have "I'm sorry I haven't a Christmas Clue" playing. That is my pre-Christmas warm-up, and what I listen to when I wrap presents. It is Humph and crew's version of "A Christmas Carol", and it is magnificent.
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