Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree, how come you look so gaudy?
We all know it is heading toward wintertime. With the blizzards and snowmen come an inevitable flood of cheery Christmas hymns and clanging holiday bops.
I only ask that they wait until after November.
I am not alone. Pass by a tinsel-tickled reveler who pollutes a public environment with manically happy jingles before the turkey is carved on Nov. 28 and you will hear groans, moans and demands for a return to sanity.
These sugar-soaked, sickly sweet tunes that would make Santa spew his cookies all over his sleigh have no place in society before the month in which the holiday they celebrate occurs. Christmas music before this time diminishes the importance of celebratory days preceding December. They also are annoying. Period.
Do you know when the Christmas mood is appropriate? Neither do I. However, it can be tolerated when it is actually Christmas. It is similar to gospel music in church. It fits. Do you know what I would not blast in church, though? Heavy metal. Christmas carols in November is like opening every Sunday worship with Metallica. It’s jarring, offensive to the senses and more than just moderately out of place.
Call me a Grinch. Call me a Scrooge. What you cannot call me is delusional. That title is reserved for those who decide to celebrate Christmas before the pumpkins have rotted. I do not know about everybody else, but I live in the here-and-now.
Another problem with this premature holiday spirit is that the commercialization of Christmas coming earlier and earlier every year. Businesses want to drain every drop of revenue they can from this wallet-bleeding season. When they see others jumping the gun, they joyously fling themselves off of the cliff with them.
The pressures of, “Did I buy enough?” and, “Am I festive enough?” come sooner and sooner. We are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the season to buy. Whether it is gifts, decorations, foodstuffs or those god-awful sweaters, we are expected to purchase for the Christmas season faster than ever before.
With that, we are also expected to buy these things over a longer period of time. This exhausting, and quite frankly predatory, practice is aided by those who force Christmas on the rest of us earlier every year.
At the end of the day, music comes down to personal tastes. Personal tastes spill over into the public domain when you allow them to. I am trying to say, keep your migraine-inducing Yuletide anthems to yourself, at least until December finally arrives. If I can wait to listen to Black Sabbath until after the actual Sabbath, you can wait to listen to “Silent Night” so that I can sleep in heavenly peace.
Landon Allison, associate editor
allisolj17@bonaventure.edu
