How to Survive the Christmas Music Onslaught

A million years ago, I worked in a grocery store to earn money for stereo equipment records and concert tickets. After a while, I became the senior part-timer, which meant that I got the most hours over the Christmas season, the most dreaded time of the year.

Not only did I irreparably ruin my back by stacking hundreds 40lb bags of flour and sugar (Lift with your knees, kids. Trust me.) to feed my small town’s baking fetishes, the staff was subjected the store’s single tape of Christmas music, played on the endless loop of the 8-track tape jammed into the cheap Lloyds stereo in the office.

Those songs are so burned into my brain that I can still remember the tracklisting:

1. Bing Crosby, “White Christmas”
2. Burl Ives, “Have  Holly Jolly Christmas”
3. Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
4. Jose Felciano, “Feliz Navidad”
5. Dean Martin, “Let It Snow”
6. Gene Autry, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
7. Andy Willians, “The First Noel”
8. Johnny Matthis, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
9. Perry Como, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”
10. Ronettes, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
11. Nat King Cole, “The Christmas Song”
12. Jim Reeves, “Jingle Bells”

From about December 1 to sometime before New Year, that tape was on perpetual repeat. Just writing this has brought me close to another PTSD episode.

Fortunately, I’ve never had to work a radio station that flips to all-Christmas music in the weeks leading up to December 25. The closest I came twas a station in Brandon, Manitoba, that ran a Muzak-like service for local businesses. Since all the playback gear was set up in the studio, it was my job to change the big 10 1/2 reels of tape every night at midnight, carefully rewinding the spent tape and setting up the new one. One night, I mounted a tape that hadn’t been rewound, meaning it was upside down on the machine. For an entire 24 hours, we broadcast Christmas music to the good people of Brandon that ran in reverse. I think there was one complaint.

Now that we’re less than four weeks from Christmas, seasonal music is everywhere. There are millions who love this stuff–witness the insane ratings boosts the all-Christmas radio stations get every December–but there’s probably an equal number of people for whom Christmas music is an auditory form of waterboarding. Because of my early experiences in the grocery store, I’m firmly in the latter group.

So what to to? The LA Times has some suggestions.

Whether you like it or not, your December playlist will be filled with holiday songs.

In malls, grocery stores, gas stations, big-box retailers, insidious commercials, Grandma’s house and looping in your brain, Christmas songs lie in wait to infect the head with holly jolly standards. Whether you hate or love “Little Drummer Boy,” your sonic December playlist will feature it at least a dozen times.

Unless you’re a shut-in, you’re doomed. But with practice and ninja-like focus, it’s possible to train the brain to deflect the most despised carols by replacing them with better or weirder versions of the same songs. Which is to say, listening to Dengue Fever’s version of “Little Drummer Boy” is way better than Pentatonix’s. The trick: Find a good, bad or ridiculous version of your most hated carols and listen to that one until it eclipses all would-be challengers.

Keep reading. Meanwhile, I will leave you with this. You know that stupid song about the kid, the dying mother and the Christmas shoes? Here’s a slightly different take on that.