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Avoiding Christmas

This year, I have one simple goal: to not hear any Christmas music. As of last week, I realized how Hurculean a task this is going to be.

First, I have to stay out of stores. I realized this when I stepped into the elevator at IKEA last Friday and got ambushed by some jazz version of a Christmas tune. I don’t remember which one, just that I recognized the first bar, at which point I stuck my fingers in my ears and started to hum, loudly. I didn’t care that I made the other woman in the elevator so uncomfortable stood WAY on the other side and scooted out the door before it even opened all the way. But I figure that I can do any holiday shopping online, either through Amazon or eBay. Even my groceries can be ordered online through Stongs. I just have to make sure that I turn off the sound on my computer - some sites ambush you with cheesy Christmas music when you least expect it.

Second, I have to keep my hand firmly on the remote control. The second the commercials come on, hit the mute button. Watching actors contort their faces and offer up merchandise that I would never, ever want to buy, while wearing decidedly Christmas-themed clothing, can be quite amusing, actually. But the sound track that goes with it drives me round the bend. So watching television is no longer a relaxing activity, it’s one filled with great vigilence. And once December proper rolls around, I may have to stop watching altogether, as the insidious strains of those same recycled Xmas tunes will make their way into the plot lines themselves, and the most caustic of shows will go mushy “for the holidays.”

Third, stay out of the public domain. Shops blare music out of stores, and some office buildings pipe special Chrismas muzack into their lobbies and elevators. You notice that despite being the public domain, which suggests Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious and cultural traditions would be honoured, it’s only the same old, same old Christmas music that gets played over and over and over and over again. I have yet to hear any Kwanzaa muzack, or Chanukah muzack. Just those same tired carols, over and over again each year.

Fourth, beware the radio. This one is the hardest because it’s hard to start changing stations while driving down the highway, and there is no guarantee that the change will be to a station not playing Christmas music at that moment. This year I have satellite radio, so I’m hoping it will be easier. Maybe I can find a nice Xmas-free station and just keep my radio tuned to that station until Dec 25th. What are the chances?

Fifth, avoid recitals. This one I’m not sure I can get away with. I’ve already been told I need to attend the recital of the granddaughter who sings with a juried choir. I can’t imagine they’ll be singing anything but Christmas carols. I won’t tempt fate by faking an illness (though it is tempting), but I am wondering if I can wear earplugs and just smile sweetly through a cotton batting fog.

Someone asked me the other evening why I hated Christmas music so much, and I must say that his premise is all wrong. I’m not Christian and don’t celebrate Christmas, so I can be benevolent and appreciate someone else’s tradition. But Christmas is one single day long, and I don’t want to listen to Christmas music for 16% of the year. That’s almost 60 days of the year, which is about 58 days too many days of Christmas music. (Can you imagine the outcry if the 8-day long holiday of Chunukah got its music billed for 4 months of the year? We’d all go mad listening to I Had A Little Dreidel five thousand times!)

I think what bugs me the most is the collective cultural blind spot to the invasiveness of Christian doctrine as part of Christmas. When my granddaughter went to a Montessori daycare that prided itself on it ecumenical-neutral stand, they would go into a Christmas frenzy at the beginning of November and continue on through the end of December. I heard more about Santa, reindeer, wise men and stars, and so on - it got nauseating for me, and I wasn’t even there all day! But talk about Chaunkah, and the response ws that “we don’t do anything religious.” So until things change, to adapt the words of the Seinfeld soup guy, No Music for Me!

Too bad Sirius doesn’t start its 92nd Street Y programming until January. At least it’s something to look forward to while you’re wearing your Christmas-filter glasses and headset.

Well, I looked up 92nd St. Y (http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/92nd-street-y-coming-to-sirius.html) and think it sounds interesting. But I don’t know if that’s just on the U.S. Sirius channel or the Canadian version. It’s not on the Sirius Canada website, but that’s not necessarily a reliable sign.

It sounds to me like your beef is really with the commercial use of mostly non-Christian music. That is, most of this music is about celebrating/decorating, weather, or Santa Claus. Not about religion.

Jingle Bells. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. Frosty the Snowman. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Deck the Halls. Silver Bells. Oh Christmas Tree. We Wish You A Merry Christmas. I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. 12 Days of Christmas. Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Calling this music “Christian” makes about as much sense as calling cars, televisions, and cookies “Christian”. If you insist that the commercial exploitation of a religious day into a 60-day shopping season is “Christian” then I wonder if you aren’t just looking for a reason to express intolerance toward the one major religion that is still fair game.

Let’s go after that other great religion. No, not Judaism or Islam, but commercial team sports (hockey, football, basketball). It bugs me that even on supposedly commercial-free CBC I have to listen to unpaid advertising in the form of sports “news” several times a day.

Good point. It’s all very intertwined for me, and I tend to rant against the baby-Jesus type of Christmas stuff (which bugs me) but truth be told, the buy-stuff-nobody-needs brand of holidays makes me just as crazy. Someone asked me why I was so anti-Christmas, and I likened it to being stuck in the disco era, listening to the same 12 albums over and over and over, as if the radio were stuck on the same station.

And yes, sports as the new opiate of the masses has been a frustration point for me for ages. When CBC lowered its standards and added sports to its newscasts, I lost some respect for the broadcast station. When our local station brought on a sportscaster who to do the newscasts, I stopped listening. In addition to a decided lack of depth in the news casts, there’s an irritating trend to make all the news sound like a sports cast: [deep voice bellowing] In the news today, Hurricane Katrina trounces the city of New Orleans in the US storm season finals. Katrina - 100,000; New Orleans - 0. Final score at 11. Ick, ick, and triple ick. Just can’t listen as the sports-to-news ratio rises steadily. But that’s a whole other topic.

Most (if not all) Christmas traditions and symbols derive from pre-Christian sources.

Yule/Solstice/Christmas (they’re really all the same—it’s just that Christians have most recently renamed and laid claim to the ancestral traditions) has 12 days, not one, corresponding to the 12 days of the Midwinter period harkening back to festivities celebrated by the pagan Romans.

Even li’l Baby Jesus may be a re-branded version of the ancient Persian saviour Mithras.

Ukrainians are among the most reverent about the 12-day period from Christmas Eve—Epiphany, and their Byzantine Christmas traditions are most certainly pagan in origin.

Christianity is a syncretic religion, which may account for its popularity. I say this while acknowledging its spread is largely attributable to genocide, colonialism, torture, and various other forms of nastiness.

As a non-adherent to any organized religion, I can get behind Christmas/Yule/Solstice festivities because they draw on the rhythms and cycles of nature, which realities still govern our existence no matter how dim our awareness of them has become.

For me, this syncretism is all good, because I find Christmas music among the most beautiful of all music in the European tradition, and expressive of the soulfulness of the season. I’m talking about, say, “O Magnum Mysterium”, or lovely Ukrainian Christmas kolyadki (from the worship of the ancient Sun God Kolyada)—not “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (although, by some accounts, Santa Claus himself may have been a shaman originally).

Celtic and Arthurian folklorist John Matthews has written a fine book on point: “The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas” (Quest Books, 1998).

Audible.com is my way of avoiding the holiday noise.  If I’m home, I listen on my computer; if I’m out, I use an mp3 player.  I’ve found that short stories are best for bus riding.  A long arc of story development doesn’t work well on a series of bus rides.

I always pack ear plugs in my backpack because vibrating bus windows and the endless guy talk about their fantasy sports at work both make me crazy.  I don’t know whether I’m noise sensitive or just an old crank, but I even use earplugs in movies if the sound is too high. 

I have no religion and really dislike over the top commercialism, so this holiday really makes me crazy.  Those same earplugs are wonderful at blocking holiday music.