Feeling The Season
Christmas music is emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health.
Yes, the Guardian’s signature inversion of the festive spirit has once again started to blossom:
‘Tis the season when you can recite every single word of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year because you’ve heard it 25,671 times this morning already and, let me tell you, there is nothing remotely wonderful about the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It’s extremely annoying.
To bolster those eye-catching claims of musical health hazards, Ms Mahdawi cites a report sharing the hitherto unguessed-at news that round-the-clock exposure to in-store Christmas songs can irritate a significant minority of retail staff. Yes, I know. I’ll pause while you steady yourselves. However, these anhedonic tidings extend beyond mere in-store playlist repetition:
The report [notes] that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26%, who I imagine all read the Guardian, said they the dislike the materialism of Christmas music.
Yes, people are buying their loved ones things that they might like. How ghastly.
It’s true that a lot of festive music is extremely materialistic.
It’s a “futile materialism,” apparently.
But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.
This, remember, is written by a grown woman.
And then there’s the 1944 call-and-response duet Baby, It’s Cold Outside, which is listed by Urban Dictionary under the heading “Christmas Date Rape Song.” It’s basically a man plying a woman with booze so she can stay a little longer because, baby, it’s cold outside, “what’s the sense in hurting my pride.”
We’ve been here before, of course, and will likely be here again next year, thanks to the tin-eared dogmatism of Guardian columnists and their readers, whose urge to signal disapproving wokeness apparently trumps all else, including the songwriters’ obvious intent.
Directly below Ms Mahdawi’s reminder that she, being progressive, is above such attempts to conjure jollity and goodwill, is another reminder. Specifically:
The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce.
I’ll just leave that one there, I think.
Articles deploring Christmas are emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health. And needlessly repetitive.
So writes columnist Arwa Mahdawi, who, it seems, and unlike most grown women, has yet to master the controls of a music player or radio.
And who also hasn’t heard of shopping online.
And who also hasn’t heard of shopping online.
Well, quite. Like countless others, I manage to buy whatever I need for Christmas without enduring more than a few minutes of department store Christmas music. Which, once a year, I think I can cope with.
#SoVeryBrave
Another foreign import upset by Western, Christian tradition.
Ms.Mahdawi is, of course, free to live in any country where Christmas isn’t celebrated.
Meanwhile, thanks to ‘diversity’, we have this at Manchesters Christmas market:
Guardian writers always sound like moody teenagers stuck with the family at Christmas.
Guardian writers always sound like moody teenagers stuck with the family at Christmas.
Heh. The moody teenager who’s only there under protest and who pointedly won’t join in, but who’ll be devastated if they don’t get a present anyway, even if it’s only to moan about how wrong and stupid it is. Unless, of course, it’s cash.
And it’s not just the air of adolescent pouting; there’s a lack of… gratitude.
Online shopping
Not a new thing:
Such fun.
The Grauniad and its readers are like the Baptists of the 19th century, dogged by a nagging fear that someone, somewhere might be having fun.
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state…
Yeah, the surveillance state was a big thing in 1934 when it was written.
“Christmas Date Rape Song.”
You mock, the Northern Ireland 5-0 was all over this.
However, they deleted that one as it was apparently not inclusive enough and corrected it.
Just remember, at that office party, everyone is raping everyone else, and caroling is gang rape of whoever is in the house being caroled.
Hm. It’s a partial improvement.
Ummmmm…… Humbug?
– And I can’t BELIEVE Ms Mahdawi missed that Santa is an old, white man. This explains so MUCH I mean, flying from house to house, sneaking down chimneys, leaving gifts for little boys and girls… without their consent…
In other festive news, today I posted the Christmas cards. I thought it was a little early, earlier than usual at least, but given the effort involved in just getting The Other Half to sign the bloody things, I wanted them out and on their way as quickly as possible. Plus, there’s always a certain implied one-upmanship in cards, with the obligation to reciprocate, and you want to get in the first blow, as it were.
“Online shopping”
Bloody hell. Wait… is that… the badge of the Hungarian communist party that the protestors cut out of their flag in 1989 as a symbolic rejection of its tyrrany? Why, I think it is. I repeat: bloody hell.
And oh, look: “Obama: 100% socialist”. I thought he absolutely, totally, 100% wasn’t, pinky swear, you hater. Well, well, well. How about that?
“Branch secretaries should write immediately for special terms”
… or else.
leaving gifts for little boys and girls…
So that’s it, Santa Claus is a pedophile!
I work in retail, and let me tell you, the crap that bombards us from the PA speakers overhead is deeply damaging to our minds, our souls, and to Christmas itself. Middle aged lounge lizards crooning about their two front teeth. Endless reminders of the story of the most famous reindeer of all. (If Rudolph is so bloody famous, why do we need the reminder?) Lesbians discussing the low temperature weather. Women who might not get home for Christmas because of, I dunno, their intense performance schedule in Vegas? (Certainly nothing about huddling in a frozen French foxhole waiting to get killed by jerries, eh?) Dreaming of a White Christmas in Houston, Texas. Something about hippopotamuses? It’s horses and sleighs and jangling bells that have no meaning anymore except to signal “Time to buy a bunch of crap.”
Not a single blessed thing about, you know, Christmas itself.
It’s not necessarily the music, it’s the unceasing and inescapable torrent of noise that sucks all the joy and juice and anticipation out of the sacred holiday. It’s the enforced jollity. It reduces the music of children and their faithful parents to nothing more than advertising and show tunes, and I absolutely hate it.
It’s not necessarily the music, it’s the unceasing and inescapable torrent of noise
As a customer who generally dislikes in-store music, and who’s been known to avoid stores that play it, I have much less objection to Christmas music. I suppose it’s the novelty and maybe I succumb to the intended mood-lifting effect. Though of course I don’t have to listen to it all day, which, as you say, might get a tad wearing.
The obvious irony is that we are bombarded by secular holiday season songs, because the leftist insistence that no one be subjected to religious Christian songs celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ has been taken to heart by all these corporate conglomerates. If they take the religion out of Christmas, they have no right to complain about the commercial remnants of the religious holiday.
Smallish Bees
I think I should start handing out free drinks for entertaining pseudonyms.
Sounds like the lady from the Guardian thinks “Ho! Ho! Ho!” is really a pervy “Heh, heh, heh.”
David, you don’t have to chase The Other Half to sign. It’s perfectly acceptable for one household member to sign for all: “Pogonip, Son of Pogonip, Bob the Betta, and Pete the Keet.” Just make sure the signer puts his name first: “David and Other.” If you are feeling like getting out of the task this year, so you say “Other [Mr. Half], I think we have a loose shingle, do these cards while I check it out,” and flee to the safety of the roof, then the ones he does get signed “Other and David.” People to whom you have been sending cards so long you have forgotten why may have also forgotten who you are, so the signer will also add a brief personal note: “Have a wonderful holiday and drop by sometime for a pickled egg.” You want something that sounds hospitable but will ensure they won’t come within a hundred miles of you, e.g. “Good news–the health department has decided we can keep twenty of the cats, rather than only nineteen.”
He sees you when you’re sleeping
[In that sexy nightgown]
He knows when you’re awake
[And he’s watching you shower]
I have to admit, I never put THAT interpretation on the song!
As a customer who generally dislikes in-store music…
Who doesn’t like the classics ?
And they never tell you they’re too tired!
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/454302/bioethicist-sex-dead-ok
And you’ll never have to send them Xmas cards!
“Not a single blessed thing about, you know, Christmas itself.”
If they would stop with the secular crap and go back to what once was, I suspect the sheer musicality would improve.
I also hate the Rudolph/Santa/toys!-centric Muzak used to allay the fears of religious noninclusion, because the music itself is so damned boring.
But I’ll linger in a store playing a good version of Drummer Boy, or the Hallelujah Chorus, or Hark The Hairy Angels, or Oh Holy Night – music with tradition and musicality that speaks to the reason for the season.
the classics
I’ve always preferred Mike Agranoff’s version of this ditty:
Thin and wan and pale and wasted
The girl with emphysema goes walking
And when she passes, each breath she passes goes “Aaauuuuuggghhh!”
Part of his classic work: “My Favorite Diseases“.
Can’t find the original recording online, alas.
I live to delight and befuddle.
Oh, and the drinks. To delight, befuddle, and free drinks.
Hark The Hairy Angels
Wait, what?
Re Baby, It’s Cold Outside, this seems apposite.
See also this feminist defence of the song by someone who actually listened to it and did some elementary research:
Apparently, such subtleties escaped Ms Mahdawi.
Of course, we also have the “amusing the first time, but soon to become an annoying earworm” parody of an “amusing the first time, but became an annoying earworm” novelty Christmas tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a55ondH9EP4
The proper response is: Quit being such a prude.
Follow up with something about the whole scene being Squaresville, and your intent to soon as possible be outtahere.
Given all the recent rage about gender, a carol for the confused.
… a carol for the confused.
Good old Bob Rivers. I was just thinking about ‘Chipmunks Roasting On an Open Fire’.
Palate cleanser.
As it is also Hanukkah season, The Chosen Surfers favor us with Dreidel Dreidel.
IIRC, “Baby it’s cold outside” was written by a NY songwriter for a housewarming.
Yes, here it is: https://www.steynonline.com/6690/baby-its-cold-outside It’s by Mark Steyn, so enjoy.
The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Someday, we may even let you see it.
Hark The Hairy Angels
Wait, what?
As it is also Hanukkah season …
Other ancient and venerable traditions are also available.
Some music for the season:
Jacob Collier’s rich (some would say overwrought or even cloying) harmonization of Harold Darke’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” — transcribed by one Jun Lee, who possesses an ear as tremendous as Collier’s grasp of harmony and voice leading (and of different tunings and temperaments, too). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-nRv0uQvH0
A shill of my own work — a series of four “rhapsodies” for piano, which one fellow musician/composer (with a large youtube following) described as “gothic in the best possible sense.” https://soundcloud.com/philip-daniel-694653902/rhapsodien-sturm-und-drang-sonata-da-chiesa-empfindsamkeit-stylus-phantasticus
OOT, “Eating Meat Perpetuates “Hegemonic Masculinity”, Professor Says”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10221
You want piano, you get piano.
A merry Hendrix Christmas.
Canadian Christmas.
Other ancient and venerable traditions…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maulana_Karenga
@ champ You think that’s bad?
Admin frets for ‘humanity’ of children raised by white parents
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10226
Redolent of Ms. Ashleigh Schakleford’s venomous tirade (before a group of sycophantic church ladies — err, I mean woke white allies) vilifying people of European descent as literal demons, as “not born into being human.”
In the ledger of “futile materialisms” the first entry is “dialectical materialism”. And
In the ledger of “futile materialisms” the first entry is “dialectical materialism”. And
Please ignore that trailing “and”.
To delight, befuddle, and free drinks.
ooooo…. Oxford comma!
Smallish Bees is already delighting me.
And the mysterious double posting. More futility?
Oh, and there’s also Puddles the Clown.
Oh, Holy Night
Christmas Time Is Here