Apologies for the second post in a row that’s about Christmas.
Last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the place where I work started blasting Christmas and secular holiday music (still no “Dreidel Song,” though, natch). Everyone that I’ve spoken to—employees and customers alike—has agreed that it’s far too early to bring out “Jingle Bells” and its ilk. I’ve never been a fan of this kind of music, and now I can say with absolute certainty that I hate it. More than eight hours a day of listening to it, standing right under the loud speakers? Forget about it. But what I like even less is having to talk about it with customers who complain it’s too early, too silly. I told a co-worker this evening that I try my best to ignore the merry soundtrack and I resent it whenever people remind me that it’s on.
There are some songs, however, that are so cringe-inducing that they are impossible to tune out. “We Need a Little Christmas” in particular makes my blood boil. I can’t tell whether one of the three—count ’em, three—versions of the song that’s in rotation is Angela Lansbury’s original recording from the 1966 Broadway musical Mame. The worst part is that while in the shower just now, brainstorming a subject about which to blog, I decided to write about this song. And now I have its ingratiating cheerfulness stuck in my head:
For we need a little Christmas / Right this very minute, / Candles in the window, / Carols at the spinet.
The Rumination Refinery 