As much as being single at Christmas sucks, I look forward to the Christmas season each year. What surprised me this morning was, when I turned on my car, how early Christmas music began playing on the radio. It's not the music of Christmas per se that bothers me. It's the timing and the songs they actually select. If they chose traditional songs, it would appeal to me more, but I get tired of "Santa Baby" and "It's the Most Wonderful Time" and "Feliz Navidad" ad nauseum. Until I was an adult, I had never heard of those songs, and they are not ones to which I choose to listen. In fact, I change the station. Unfortunately, of the six station presets in my Saturn, THREE of them were already playing "holiday music" and that vexes me.
Like the other holidays, retailers accelerate the coming of Christmas. I read yesterday that Black Friday now lasts an entire week thanks to Wal-Mart and similar companies that open on Thanksgiving and offer special and unique sales all the way through Cyber Monday. Even Amazon is already selling special Black Friday items, and it's two weeks early. All this effort to move from one holiday to the next kind of deflates the wind from the sails of our journey through the most wonderful time of the year. Displacing Thanksgiving, however, is not something I am prone to tolerate well. In all the hours I spend praying, and for all the complaining I do, the campaigning I do, and the requests I make, I do take time regularly here and elsewhere to thank God and my family and other people for the great things in my life. My life is wonderful, and I like the opportunity to give thanks each year. It makes me think of things more than the immediate, the trite, and the vacuous that we sometimes take for granted unless forced to consider just how blessed we really are.
Radio stations predominantly play secular songs during the Christmas Season. That's all well and dandy, but they do this because they don't want to drive away their audience. If they play Holy Night, Silent Night, and O Little Town of Bethlehem, they know they'll alienate people who are not of any Faith, let alone some Christians who are just a wee bit anxious that Christ might actually be real. The songs they play get us in the mood, sing of the season, but really just remind me that Christmas was changed to December by Rome's order to outcompete a pagan holiday at the same time. They're really just pandering to the irreligious, the sacreligious, and those for whom religion is a convenient vestment rather than celebrating the Christ. I don't want a Hippopotamus, I don't think Santa is sexy, and I really can't stay because I shouldn't and I won't. Those are not Christmas songs. Those are "holiday songs".
Most of this behavior is motivated by money at its core. Retailers want stuff on the shelves earlier so they can turn a profit earlier. Radio stations don't want to lose the majority of their customers, and so rather than alienate the lion's share, they pander to those who do not share my beliefs, knowing that they will only lose a few of us who are put off by their mercantilism. Whereas I am mostly finished with my Christmas shopping, most people have only just begun. This allows retailers and radio stations to sell advertising to people who are more about gifts than about God, and I wish them well in their efforts to make money. God knows that this nation is still financially struggling no matter what the politicians prattle.
I am not happy about the infiltration of Christmas deeper into November. Tonight, I will find my Christmas mix tape (yes, it's a cassette tape) and put it in my car, where I will listen to it like I always do until sometime in March when it just feels too warm to be Christmas. By consequence, I will hear even LESS advertising, because I won't be listening to the radio at all. I realize that I represent an infinitesimal fraction of the listening public, but this is my stand. I can listen to the traditional holiday hymns as I like whenever I like because I like them. It can be Joy to the World today and even for Valentine's Day. Even more stations and retailers alienate me by doing this, and I pledge to not make a purchase at Christmas on Thanksgiving Day. That is a day that is not for banks but for thanks. That's what November is about, and I thank God that I feel that way about it.
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