Let the turkey have his day
As October comes to a close, so does Halloween, or “spooky season,” as many young adults and children title it. With Halloween passing, it’s time to put away the frightening decorations, hide away all the tempting candy, and put away that costume you wear once every few years. As the winner of a holiday contest over the spooky weekend, I am satisfied and ready to move onto the next holiday: Thanksgiving.
Notice how I didn’t say Christmas? Upon the conclusion of October, many decide to build anticipation for Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. I understand why many are more excited for Christmas than Thanksgiving, as Christmas has much more unique traditions. But while I will never tell people not get excited for decorating the house and tree, I do have one request: can we not turn the Christmas music on just yet? Many people see Nov. 1 as the first opportunity of the year to play the holly jolly tunes we hear excessively every year. I personally would not like to hear the same twenty or fewer songs for the next two months.
First off, many seem to listen to these songs solely out of tradition. While I understand people listen to different music based on context, I feel like there’s a reason many Christmas songs are only played for two months: many are not very good. Christmas songs are overly cheery, repetitive, and only one or two new staple songs every decade. But of course, since it’s the last two months of the year, radio stations have to play Christmas music. Imagine how odd it’d be to do this for other holidays. Imagine listening to only country music and the national anthem during the months of June and July.
Stores and radio stations playing Christmas music early also feels rather peculiar. It feels as if the store owners play these songs to have customers say, “Oh yeah! Christmas is soon. I should start my shopping.” This then leads to people purchasing way too much, exploiting people’s holiday spirit for the greed of the store owners.
I’m also rather tired of publications talking about how outdated the staple songs are every year. I get that songs like “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” have questionable lyrics, but maybe we shouldn’t expect music from half a century ago to be completely politically correct in 2019. Maybe if artists created new songs instead of covering old ones, we wouldn’t have to listen to tiresome Christmas tracks.
I am certainly not going to say avoid listening to Christmas music all together: in fact, I outright love many jazz arrangements of these songs, such as “Go Tell It On the Mountain” by the United States Airforce Band. I’m just saying perhaps waiting until it’s closer to Dec. 25 will ensure the songs don’t become stale.
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