At a cocktail party last week, a guy told me that, actually, it’s not just you — the onslaught of Christmasiana did start early this year. Usually, it just seems like the tinselly retail-driven barrage of carols and advertising has crept forward a bit further than the previous year, but according to my source, “they” all got together and decided that, in 2004, the Christmas season would begin promptly on November 1.

I don’t know who this “they” is or where my mole got his information, but in spite of the fact that he relayed it through a mouthful of edamame, I believed him. The Christmas-themed catalogs led the charge, showing up at the end of October, and then TV rushed in right behind as soon as Halloween had ended, nestling every product on the bosom of a two-parent family seated around a garishly decorated tree and wearing both pajamas and a robe over top, which I swear to God people only do on TV, like, just turn the damn heat up, TV people. Well, unless you can’t afford to heat the house anymore because you spent the last ten weeks in an orgiastic fog of spending and have only just emerged to find yourself on the oil company’s no-fly list.

It’s just too much. I like Christmas, but I like Christmas because — in theory, anyway — it’s a special, magical time of year, but if said time of year lasts for two months, it’s neither special nor magical. It’s a credit-rating death march with a soundtrack. A crappy soundtrack, might I add, from which there is no escape.

I do most of my shopping online, so I can avoid the mall, which is a unique Christmas-music hell in that every store has a different song loop, each one blaring out the open front doors and competing not only with each other but with the mall’s own PA system, and the mall’s mix is extra-heavy on the sleigh bells and psychotically cheery trumpets in order to make itself heard over ringing cash registers, children screaming their heads off in terror because Santa smells like a rum-soaked diaper, rustling wrapping paper, crinkling bags, couples fighting over in-law gifts, the Andrews Sisters, a clumsy woman who just knocked over an entire display of stock pots in Williams-Sonoma with her messenger bag (that happened to a friend), cell phones ringing, screechy teenagers running up the down escalator, and I run out to the car and dump all my shit in the back seat and prepare to flee, but “fleeing” consists of “inching toward the exit because the parking lot signage is hilariously inadequate for the task of directing everyone in the state to the proper level,” and I turn on the radio, and every station is playing a Christmas song — every single one, even the classic-rock station, of which I expected better, and I say so to the console while John and Yoko and their dirty hair self-righteously drone that war is only continuing to exist because I, the listener, don’t want it to end badly enough, like, don’t judge me, John, I voted a straight Democratic ticket, and anyway, what kind of half-assed lyric is “the world is so wrong,” anyway? Who wrote that shit, Jim Morrison?

“And so this is Christmas,” indeed — screaming at the car radio without regard to witnesses that “you can both go STRAIGHT TO HELL!” and punctuating it with an angry finger-point, which I then use to change the station, but to no avail, because the Christmas “music” is everywhere. It’s in the post office, it’s in the grocery store, it’s in the cab, it’s in the Gap and Starbucks and Sharper Image, and even if I cling to Amazon like a drowning man to a plank for my shopping needs, eventually I will have to go out for milk, and I can’t get in and out of the deli quickly because I live in lottery-ticket country, so the line is fifteen minutes long, and everyone in it is grimly singing “Mele Kalikimaka,” which is worse than “Soldier Boy” and “Edelweiss” put together in terms of getting stuck in my head. It’s the herpes of Christmas songs; I’ll be whistling it through gritted teeth until late March.

And they’ll probably revoke my Jersey girl card for this, but what the hell. I’ve never really liked Bruce Springsteen all that much. I don’t dislike Bruce Springsteen, but I don’t own any of his albums, I’ve never gone to a Springsteen show…I hear he puts on a great one, but Jersey natives hear so much Springsteen growing up that for a lot of us he’s just kind of there, like air, or jughandles. With that said, the Boss’s rendition of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” has got to go. Now. Enough. I hate that song anyway, because Santa is all emotionally abusive and stalky in it and generations of parents have used it to keep their kids in line all, “Hey, I’d only check the list once, but Santa’s a hard-ass, so you’d better shut it,” but the Springsteen version seriously goes on for like an hour, and also, when he’s bellowing, “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAN-ta Clause is comin’ to town,” you can actually hear polyps massing on his vocal cords. Bruce, dude. Love you, mean it, but — take it down a notch. It’s a song about Santa Sophie’s Choice-ing a bunch of innocent kids; it’s not all that happy. Also, if Clarence wants a new saxophone he can take his ass to the saxophone store and buy one his own damn self. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.

Nor do I want to hear about Grandma and her demise at the hands of a reindeer. Actually, I don’t want to hear about any reindeer unless it’s a passing mention by Nat King Cole, because that song is okay. But…what is with “all of the other reindeer,” anyway? Your name is Blitzen, chump — since when do you get to make fun of anyone else? And why didn’t Santa put a stop to that? “He’s our meal ticket, you brats, so unless you all want to crash into the side of a mountain and end up bear kibble, let Rudy play Reindeeropoly, and that’s an order.” But “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”…okay, here’s the thing about that song. It’s an awful song, the guy’s voice is irritating, it’s not that funny, but…we got a ton of mileage out of that song teasing our own grandmother, because the first time we played it for her, I mean to tell you, OUTRAGE. She’s fuming and spluttering about how it’s disrespectful and not funny and think how we’d feel if we actually had to return her presents because she got trampled by venison; we’re looking at each other like, “Daaaaaamn,” and then just falling out laughing because she’s FURIOUS, and the more we laugh, the angrier she gets, and the angrier she gets, the funnier we think it is, and my grandma’s all “WELL, I GUESS I’LL JUST GO HOME AND SIT IN THE DARK IF THAT’S HOW YOU ALL FEEL ABOUT ME AROUND HERE” while my brother’s in the kitchen making hoof-beat noises with a wooden salad bowl and yelling, “Oh Graaaaandma, your riiiiiide’s here,” and finally she had to start laughing herself, so she did, and then for years we’d do shit like “hey, Grandma, want to see something neat? It’s on the roof, get your coat,” or pointing into the middle distance and shouting “REINDEER ALERT” and diving to the floor while making air-raid-siren noises, or getting off the phone and informing her that that was Cupid and he said to tell her she’s toast, and every time she’d be all, “How does he know the numb– oh, HATE!” and start giggling. Now, it’s no fun. We miss you, Grandma. Thanks for not hitting us with your slipper for teasing you so bad, because we totally deserved it.

Perhaps our karmic punishment is the miserable proliferation of Christmas standards sung (read: “shouted, trilled, and otherwise over-ornamented”) by pop stars. The nadir, in my opinion, is shared by Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and the wretched “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” although I’ve discovered that you can ease the pain of the former somewhat by changing the lyrics to “Last Christmas / I gave you my heart / and the very next day / I admitted I’m gay.” Substituting “fart” for “heart” can also provide some comfort. For the latter, however, there is no cure. The chorus is so, so annoying: “Feeeeeeee the wuhhhh-uhhhhhh!” Also: Yes. Yes, they know it’s Christmastime. They know because that song is played three times a day for a month and a half. They might not have enough to eat, and they might not have any better idea than we do about what “clanging chimes of doom” are doing in a holiday song, or what the phrase “clanging chimes of doom” is even supposed to mean since if you’re going for doom everyone knows you need a heavier-duty instrument than a chime, but you’d better believe that, now, they know it’s Christmastime. So you can shut up now.

But these pale in comparison with the glissanderrific renditions of “O Holy Night” by the songsters and songstresses of the moment. I don’t hate the song per se; we sang “O Holy Night” every year at my school, but we sang the French version, which for whatever reason removes a lot of the oversinging torque from the chorus, and also, the song functioned as a solo for one deserving senior who had done her yeoman duty in the Chamber Singers and got to lead the entire Chorale by singing the first verse on her own, and we’re all in the gym, lit by pinlights, arrayed in a rough star shape on the bleachers and wearing our official holiday-program white blouses with black satin cravats and floor-length black skirts, and the soloist is down front, twitching from nerves and trying not to barf, and the pianist starts in with the “doo doo doo DOO doo doo, doo doo doo DOO doo doo,” and the entire Chorale is praying for the soloist because we’ve seen it go horribly awry before including during rehearsal yesterday, and she starts off kind of quavery and scratchy and almost inaudible because she’s so nervous she can’t breathe, and the whole second alto section is quietly muttering “come on, come on, you’ve got it” to itself because out of everyone on the stage we’re the only ones who can’t just jump in and cover her if need be because the part’s too high for us, and then she’s on the second line and she’s getting her footing, you could see a shower of sparks coming off that last high note but at least she hit it and it looks like she’s going to make it, her throat isn’t so tight, she’s just singing now, here she is at “d’espérance” so she knows she’s almost done, just one more line and we’ll take it from there, and when the director cues us for “peuple à genoux,” the rest of us just come thundering in all “THANK GOD” and release a sonic boom of relief over the heads of the audience. My point: The song is hard. I know it’s hard. It took a village of teenage girls to get just one of us over the wall of “solennelle.” Just sing the damn thing and stop showing off. Christmas carols, generally, reflect a certain sense of hushed wonder, so if you’ve just added ninety-five thousand sixteenth notes to your cheesy rendition of “Silent Night,” subtract them right now, because no one cares, Mariah.

And do not remake “Little Drummer Boy.” I detest that song. What kind of maroon plays the DRUMS for a SLEEPING NEWBORN? That kid shows up at my barn with his kit after I’ve just given birth and asks shall he play for me, I am not nodding — is Mary insane? “I’m exhausted from the donkey ride and the labor and whatnot, and I probably have sepsis because I had to deliver Our Lord into a mangy hay bale — what better time to hear from the rhythm section”? Say it with flowers, Little Drummer Boy! God!

And speaking of things in Christmas songs that I don’t understand, what is going on in “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”? First of all, in my house, you stayed in bed Christmas Eve or you got a spanking in your stocking. Second of all, either Mommy is cheating on Daddy with Santa, or Daddy is dressed up as Santa and it’s some kind of May-December roly-poly kinky thing that the kid doesn’t need to see, which leads me my third point, namely that the child is kind of a voyeur, and when Mommy gets done playing tonsil hockey with St. Nick, she might want to look into a child psychologist before neighborhood pets start disappearing.

One last point, which I’d like to address to radio programmers: please do not play “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas” back-to-back. Please. I beg you. Why? So glad you asked. Two reasons: First, the McCartney song IS TERRIBLE. I don’t object to synthesizers as a rule — I grew up in the eighties, after all — but when you turn the Moog on and drop an angry cat on it instead of actually playing it, I can’t hang with that. Also, you’ve got poor dead Karen Carpenter sighing that she’ll be home for Christmas, if only in her dreams, like she’s alone in a diner eating lukewarm figgy pudding (or, I guess, not eating it) and missing her family, and it’s sort of depressing, and then boom! Paul McCartney’s gloating about how he’s having this awesome Christmas so nyah, like, of course he is — he’s rich! He can pay someone to untangle that snarl of twinkly lights and replace the burnt-out bulbs! I don’t need to hear it from Sir Paul! Or from the dogs barking “Jingle Bells,” or from the goddamn Chipmunks! We wish you some Kevlar earplugs, and a happy new year!

December 6, 2004

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