Have Yourself a Merry Little Jingle-bell Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

I know it’s a little late to be bringing this up – so-called “holiday music” has been in the air non-stop since before Halloween. And I didn’t want just to complain about it. After all, we have Andy Rooney to do that. Plus, the past couple of weeks I’ve been preoccupied with committing random acts of coughing so I am kind of in catch-up mode here.

Patriotism aside, I am not much of a shopper. I don’t hang out at the mall. I long ago stopped buying things for the kids in my extended family, preferring instead to blow my gift budget on experiences. You know, tickets to the Nutcracker, a train ride with Santa and so on. (This year in a moment of questionable sanity, I forked over an amount roughly equivalent to the GDP of a developing nation to take a small boy to see the Harlem Globetrotters. Love makes fools of us all.)

Nevertheless, I do step into a retail establishment from time to time. Even the Grinch has to buy groceries or pick up something at the drug store now and then. And for nearly one quarter of the year, when I step into said retail establishment, I am treated, as are we all, to “holiday music.”

Now, I’m not going to go on about the questionable content of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” or vent about the tasteless trashing of true Christmas classics by pop stars who either belt loud enough to wake the poor babe in the manger or slide all over a tune as if it’s been sprayed with PAM. And I’m certainly not going to tell you my fantasies of sneaking a bit of rat poison into Rudolph’s feed bag or taking the Little Drummer Boy out with an automatic weapon. (Rat-a-tat-tat - do you hear what I hear?!)

No, my issue with this ubiquitous sound-track has to do with audience. For whom is this twelve-week long Holly Jolly Christmas being played? This inquiring mind really wants to know. Every person I asked about it either said she loathes the stuff, or claimed she simply doesn’t hear it anymore. OK, I admit mine was a thoroughly unscientific and very limited study – perhaps a dozen people, some of whom were at work in these retail establishments when we chatted. (Their response BTW was invariably the latter.)

So, back to the question - why is this stuff playing? If everybody either hates being pelted for weeks on end with bad renditions of Winter Wonderland or completely tunes it all out, what, I ask you, what is the point?

Help me, please.