The War on Christmas is pretty much on, now--

[vixengrl]

My husband marked the annual flare-up between us and the season by asking me a question I already knew the answer to:

"Can you guess what they started playing at work?"

Without missing a beat, I answered, "Christmas music." It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and the Christmas music is being heard in retail stores, probably throughout America. I knew, because I worked retail myself about eleven years ago, and they did it to us then--constant, wall-to-wall Christmas music.

It would start as sporadic Christmas songs interspersed between the usual repetitive warblings of Musak drivel. But just after Thanksgiving, it became all Christmas, all the time. I suppose that it's something retail stores do to encourage people to be in a merry, giving, cheerful shopping mood. Great for the customers, or at any rate, the ones who like Christmas music. But for the employees?

It's like psyops. No, seriously. Being bombarded for eight or nine hours with that trite, sappy nonsense--think about it: spending that whole time on your feet being nice to people while listening to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" for the umpteenth time is a very subtle form of mental torture. I'm not saying it's the exact equivalent of the songs being played to torment detainees at Gitmo or whatever. I'm just saying that there is a time and a place for Bruce Springsteen's rendition of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", and that twice a day, every day, is not that time. It gets under your skin. It makes you associate the holiday with work--not always pleasant, since holiday shoppers aren't always merry shoppers. It transforms the benign treacle the usually brings visions of sugarplums into a poison that brings thoughts of reindeer slaughter.

Okay. Maybe I exaggerate. But what I don't think is always considered is that these songs really are sometimes very Christian-referent. I realized this when I was working at a store in my old neighborhood. Better than a third of my customers were very observant Jews, and a similar number were Russian immigrants. They could have given a good goddamn about "O Little Town of Bethlehem." My first Christmas at the store, I asked if it was maybe possible that next year, we could get Hanukkah paper to go with all the Christmas paper we had (my manager was Jewish, so he totally understood). Maybe we could even try to get it--by Hanukkah!

I never really found out what the effects of the wall-to-wall joyful ti--ii-dings of joy, comfort and joy, were on our customers. I was in an office supply store, so while we sold a lot of computer games and printers and we got some fancy desk-top tchochkes, we didn't see quite the kind of seasonal madness that a toy store probably sees. Probably, since shopping is an in-and-out thing, it isn't torture for customers. Since I'm somewhat "culturally Christian", I don't know if it's actually alienating to people of other faiths, even though it kind of seems like it should be to me now.

(I may be a hardened case, though. I am the veteran of public school choirs and also sang in college--so practicing Christmas carols for hours on end was part of my "Musak resistance training.")

When I hear the Christmas Musak during my shopping, it still causes flashbacks of how tired I really got of hearing the same songs over and over--any song, played often enough, can begin to grate. Knowing that my husband is suffering from this torment on a daily basis (which he would militate against on aesthetic, even if not religious grounds, being not just an atheist but a lover of good music--and much Christmas music is pretty cheesy) is heart-breaking.

Maybe store associates are saying "Happy Holidays!" to customers in order to be inclusive. But the people who complain about a "War on Christmas" never really sat in a store and noticed Karen Carpenter turning "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" into a funeral dirge, have they? Well, HAVE THEY!!????? (Or "Home for the Holidays". Also sad.)

Ahem. Almost lost control there. Anyway, anyone who has done a stretch in retail, and especially if they have done a stretch in retail and been a non-believer in the details of Christmas, knows that Christmas is actually in your ever-loving face every day for sometimes over a month. We didn't start a war on Christmas--it's like Christmas started a war on us!

I am totally going to make up very bad lyrics to the next Christmas carol I hear.


(Christmas BONUS story: I used to take the bus to class when I was in college, and I passed a yard that had a very handsome chow dog. Well, all chow dogs are handsome, but they are tempermental furry beasties, and this one seemed to be left in the fenced yard too damn often. Yards are at least "out", but a dog gets bored. Anyway, one year, the people the chow belonged to set out a nearly people-sized light-up Santa on their front yard, the kind that has a hole in the bottom for the wires to come out. One day, as the bus passed that yard, the chow dog had the Santa over on its side, and....was doing something very familiar to the hole where the wires came out.

I don't know if dogs ever get coal in their stockings. I just know that if Santa Claus wasn't coming to town, that dog was taking him to town. I laughed my behind off at the image all day.)

(X-posted at my blog--http://vixenstrangelymakesuncommonsense.blogspot.com/)

[trotsky]

1. It used to be that I'd enjoy most Xmas music, at least for a week or so.

Now I can't even enjoy it for that, because I get to hear it in mid-November (or earlier) and KNOW I'm going to be subjected to it non-stop for another 6 weeks. And that's a pity, because I really do enjoy everything else that's not particularly Christian about the holiday they stole.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

2. I was in Utah this last weekend

And I found 3 radio stations that were already playing wall-to-wall Xmas tunes. A week before Thanksgiving, and I'm already sick of the songs after hearing 10 minutes of sappy, sugary jebus songs on the radio. It makes my fucking teeth hurt.

[onager]

3. Hark! The herald anus sings!

:evilgrin:

Thanks for a great rant, vixengrl.

I was ready to go all medieval on Baby Jebus, Santa and all twelve tiny dickwad reindeer in Egypt - of all places. A country that's 95% Muslim.

For almost 2 years over there, I lived in an American-owned hotel. It was managed and run by otherwise sane Egyptians (except for closing the un-goddamed bar during the whole month of Ramadan. Brown-nosers! And they did have a second bar, in the Exec Lounge - behind closed doors. Hypocrites! End Secondary Rant.)

Anyway, they sure were up on American Xmas traditions. They started the Xmas Muzak on Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, nobody seemed to know when to shut it off.

So we were still hearing that crap in February/March. A-r-r-g-h! In the lobby, in every hotel restaurant, in the bar...pretty much everywhere in the hotel except the privacy of my own room. But when I left my room, I got earwormed in the hallways and yes, even the elevators. When they worked.

I did get a perverse thrill out of hearing "The First Noel," with its reference to "born is the king of Israel." A nation not often mentioned very favorably in Egypt...to put it mildly.

Though its fairly recent, Egyptians are going almost as crazy as Americans over Christmas Crap. It can't be only the native Coptic Xians who are behind this - there aren't many of them, and they don't celebrate Xmas until January anyhow (they use the Orthodox calendar).

But walking around Alexandria between Thanksgiving and Xmas and looking in store windows, I saw lots of the same junk we see in American stores - Santa, elves, reindeer. Occasionally a creche, but not very often.

Right down the street from my hotel, one furniture store had two huge inflatable Santas flanking the door. It reminded me of ancient Egyptian temples, with Osiris and Sobek The Crocodile God guarding the entrances.

As I once commented in R&T to annoy the faithful: it seems that the Egyptians are adopting the good parts of Xmas, like giving gifts, and dumping the bad parts, like Jesus.

[enlightenment]

4. We have two ice cream trucks that cruise our

neighborhood like politicians looking for a little love on a Saturday night. Every single day, but especially on the weekends. They start about 9am and continue until about 9pm. They both play canned music - at least three-quarters of it is Christmas music. Sometimes they cross paths but unfortunately, they do not cancel each other out when they do so.

They do this ALL YEAR ROUND.

meh