Fish and Visitors Stink in Three Days

Its beginning to sound a lot like Christmas, and aren't you fed up with it already? The daughter who works at WalMart yelps if somebody starts playing our CD of Christmas songs. She says the store plays a 1-hour Christmas music tape on endless repeat, and she can't stand any more. She voices, loudly, what the rest of us feel--I don't know anybody who doesn't start feeling bored with the caroling long before the 25'th. When I worked at Sears in Chicago, we had the same Christmas muzak tape every year, including a dreary flute instrumental of "Christmas in Killarney." At least the rhythm was regular. The WalMart tape plays a lot of pop Christmas, and the singers can't count. And they think sliding all over the note sounds cool. E.

Why do we have to be bored? I'm told there are thousands of carols to choose from, in many variations--the music should be a feast! OK, OK. A large chunk of the songs are in Latin and French, and quite a number use musical styles not very common these days. They might be a wee bit tough to understand.

• The holiday is schizophrenic. The core of it is a one or two day celebration of Jesus' birth. This celebration is the focus of the vast majority of those afore-mentioned carols. But in order to sell lots of stuff, we've parlayed a 2-day festival into a 2-month potlatch "Season." You can gird yourself up to smile and be happy for a day when somebody else is celebrating, but 2 months worth of "Happy Holidays!" will bust a gasket somewhere. And what's the deal with "Happy Holidays" when I'm working hard through 90% of the "holiday season?" OK, OK. Jesus said we were to love each other, and I suppose people are trying hard to work up some appearance of love using smiles and gift giving. "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."
• The religious carols and the older secular carols are very much more focused on "the day," and so feel out of place when Christmas is still many weeks away. Imagine how you'd feel with people singing Happy Birthday at you for a month before your actual birthday--it feels pretty meaningless after a while, doesn't it?
• The modern secular carols fall into only two categories: the I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas fed-up-with-Christmas-carols carols and the unremittingly happy Silver Bells type. Frankly, I never feel any of Rudolph's pain--the song is far too peppy. Two months: no, two days of White Christmasy songs makes me long for a touch of reality.
  

  Compare the lyrics for yourself:
  "A thrill of hope--the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn"
  "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow."
  If I must sit through either song a dozen times, I'd rather hear the one that knows about the sorrow as well as the joy, and that talks of active hope rather than foggy reminisces.

• To make matters worse for the secular carols, there really aren't very many good ones. Most carol collections used on the radio and shopping centers pick from the secular set and a very restricted set of very familiar religious carols, presumably to keep from offending non-Christians and from giving Christians unmerchandisable ideas ("ye who seek to bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing" from Good King Wenceslas). The result: I can't think off the top of my head of more than 50-80 songs I hear regularly.

  At from 2 to 3 minutes per song (ever notice that the stores play shorter versions?), that comes to less than 3 hours of playing time, and more like 2. Visit 4 stores (15 minutes each) and you're already likely to be hearing the same tune repeated, not counting what you hear on the radio and on commercials and ... and ... Of course, the stores don't want you paying attention to the music, so don't expect dramatic themes.

• Can things be more dismal? Every singer thinks she needs to inflict her own style on the old carols in a Christmas CD. It stands as a testimony to the quality of the originals that they hold up as well as they do under the onslaught of the random stresses and tempo changes that pass for emoting. It is the aural equivalent of putting the Mona Lisa in a circus pink frame.

I suppose I'm being a tiny bit unfair to the merchants. We use Thanksgiving and Christmas to honor families. That's not a lot of time for people so important, so we try to stretch it out a bit. The two months of sweet songs isn't entirely a sales ploy. Some of it is because we feel guilty for neglecting our families and try to make it up. I guess I shouldn't complain too much: we mean well. Sometimes.