The Evil That Is Christmas Music

I write tonight to reveal to you my full loathing of Christmas Music. I'm not generally fond of ANYTHING having to do with Christmas, with the exception of candy canes. But ever since I started working at the craft store, I've begun hating it even more.

As I'm sure you're aware, during the Christmas season, most stores play Christmas music the entire time they're open. However, with craft stores, Christmas season starts sooner than other stores. Early November, to be exact, although Christmas merchandise comes in earlier than that.

At our store, we subscribe to a "Muzak" company, which offers various channels that play only Christmas music. These channels each apparently only represent one CD each, because no matter what channel is selected, it always seems like they play the same 15 songs over and over again. Never is this more apparent and annoying than during Christmas season. Because even if you get a different song for a change, it usually just some one else's version of "Jingle Bells" or some other over-played Christmas song.

The last two years, the channel selected has been a mixture of timeless classics and more modern Christmas songs. This year, we have a new manager, who probably didn't know what channel was picked in previous years, and probably left it on the first one to play Christmas music. So, we have been stuck with the "All Dead People Christmas Network". Not a single song was sung by anyone who is currently still living. All of them are older, slower, and with each singer trying to "make the song their own" (translation: mangling it). This has proved even more torturous than what we had to put up with last year.

My department, and the area where I usually work most of the day, are directly underneath a speaker. So, there is very little escape from the endless stream of "Silver Bells". And this has caused me to come up with two very major questions this year:

1: At what point did "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things" become a Christmas song? Aside from mentioning snowflakes and mittens, it has nothing to do with Christmas!

2: What is with the "Thumpity thump thump" part of "Frosty the Snowman"? Did the writer run out of lyrics? Because I don't really think the idea of Frosty running around evokes in me a feeling of "thump"! I may have to come up with alternate lyrics, just for my own satisfaction.

But at any rate, as awful as the overhead music is, it's nothing compared to what we now have to put up with.

A week ago, Chris (our manager) aparently had enough of the overhead music, and shut it off. There followed a blissful week of silence. Into this silence came a woman with a guitar. She played a few songs for Chris and some of the people in the store. It was odd, but she left soon after, and I didn't think anything of it.

Well, apparently she made some kind of arrangement with Chris, because when I went to work yesterday, she's all set up just inside the front door, playing her guitar and singing. She's sitting on one of the stools from the Frame Department, she's got a music stand set up, and Chris had Sasha from my department decorate a tip jar for her.

Now I know the true meaning of pain. She suffers from the same problem I have, namely, she sings an octive too high. I've compensated for this by either not singing in public, or concentrating on singing lower. She, however, compensates by singing louder.

She also is prone to forgetting the words in the middle of her song, but she cleverly disguises this fact by suddenly switching to another song. Usually "Silver Bells". She also subscribes to the notion that "My Favorite Things" is a Christmas song.

She sits right next to the cash registers, an area that has enough stress around it as it is. The first time I went up there to cashier while she was singing, I was there for all of 3 seconds before all I could think was "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!!" I find myself yelling at the customers in order to be heard over her shrill singing. Any higher pitch, and it wouldn't be a problem, because only dogs would be able to hear her.

So anyhow, she was there for the second day today, and who nows how much longer we'll have to put up with her. Hopefully I can keep from killing anyone.