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Stop the madness

Chronic Christmas carol overdose can turn anyone into a Scrooge

By: Bartley Kives

21/12/2009 6:51 AM | Comments: 11

Back in 1963, Andy Williams recorded a little ditty about the winter holidays called It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

Almost half a century later, the easy-listening crooner has yet to pay for his cultural crimes, as the song he popularized became the foundation for the most oppressive sonic pastiche to ever assault the ears of humanity: The dreaded phalanx of Christmas tunes that batters every denizen of the western world at this consumer-mad time of the year.

Yes, being annoyed by Christmas music is hardly an original sensation. Columnists have complained about the Great Wall of Wenceslas, Rudolph The Rage-Inducing Reindeer and the God-forsaken Never-resting Scary Gentlemen ever since these horrible jingles first jangled out of junky old radios and shimmied across the corridors of vintage shopping malls.

But the sad fact remains the music business, retail industry and broadcasting world all continue to conspire to give us the holiday music we do not want, Christmas season after Christmas season.

(And let’s not pretend it’s the more inclusive and generic "holiday season," because Hanukkah is a relatively minor event in the grand scheme of Judaic things and Kwanza has yet to really catch on.)

During the long, protracted eon I worked as a music writer, the only task I truly loathed involved Christmas tunes. Every year, competent recording artists who should otherwise know better would record an album full of mouldy-oldie holiday standards, rounded out with a couple of original tunes that people used to skip by in the days of CDs and would later learn to avoid online.

Even greater numbers of cheesy country crooners, unpalatable pop singers and geriatric jazz vocalists — most of whom never possessed the tiniest morsel of good taste in the first place — would cram themselves into recording studios and generate even more putrid versions of these rotten chestnuts, either out of a shameless desire to sell a few units or the misguided belief they were bringing joy to the world.

Every November, I would stack these pieces of plastic on a corner of my desk and secretly hope the office kleptomaniac would run away with the entire pile. And during my first year at the Free Press, somebody actually did steal a Celine Dion disc.

For some bizarre reason, I complained. I was widely ridiculed at the office Christmas party. I should have just thanked the thief the same way I would thank a surgical oncologist for creeping up to me during my sleep, cutting open my belly and removing a tumour I never knew I had embedded in my gut.

I understand it is not possible to excise holiday music from the holiday season in a similar manner. But in a country where we regulate the nationality of the performers we play on the radio, would it not be possible to enact some form of legislation to protect the fragile sanity of the silent majority of Canadians who would rather not hear about some childhood trauma involving an illicit glimpse of mama and Santa Claus engaged in some intimate act?

For the second Sunday in a row, I’m going to evoke the sacred name of Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin, the patron saint of wacky causes, who has successfully fought for the right of Gordon Bell high school students to wander into traffic, semi-successfully waged war against the payday-loan industry and unsuccessfully issued a fatwa against trans fats.

Pat, if you’re out there, please introduce a private dismemberment bill I think we should call the Yuletide Moderation Control Act. The YMCA would require all radio stations, cable companies, Internet access providers and that shmuck who sings to himself in the back of the No. 18 bus to restrict the number of Christmas tunes they emit to one song per hour during the period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 25 — or two weeks later if you happen to be Ukrainian.

Please, Pat, use your powers of persuasion to get parliament to back the YMCA. Just imagine, a holiday season where nobody’s blood pressure has to rise beyond medically acceptable levels due to the excessive amplification of Winter Wonderland and Let It Snow, two songs that express sentiments no Winnipegger would ever convey, unless they happen to operate a snowplow.

Now there might be a handful of people who take offence to this little rant. They may argue holiday tunes are all about tradition and a yearning, for simpler, more rustic times.

But is there really anything nostalgic about Christmas standards? I mean, when’s the last time you dashed through anything in a one-horse open sleigh? Have you ever roasted chestnuts over an open fire? No, you have not. The vast majority of Canadians don’t even know how to roast a chicken.

So don’t even pretend to like these holiday tunes. Help me help Pat Martin in the House of Commons instead.

And while we’re at it, let’s get Andy Williams up before International Court of Justice. At 82, he’s not too old to be incarcerated.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

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11 Commentscomment icon

Great article - very entertaining. However, "Last Christmas" has to be the best/worst Christmas song ever.

Funniest column in a while Bartley. You made me laugh several times over. I remember a certain radio station in Brandon that I swear played "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" at least twice an hour from December through January. Nauseating........

Happy Holidays

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I love the Porky Pig Blue Christmas song! Other than that the rest pretty much sucks! haha

"But is there really anything nostalgic about Christmas standards? I mean, when’s the last time you dashed through anything in a one-horse open sleigh? Have you ever roasted chestnuts over an open fire? No, you have not. The vast majority of Canadians don’t even know how to roast a chicken."

I got a good chuckle from that little section... it is so true!

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I love the Porky Pig Blue Christmas song! Other than that the rest pretty much sucks! haha

"But is there really anything nostalgic about Christmas standards? I mean, when’s the last time you dashed through anything in a one-horse open sleigh? Have you ever roasted chestnuts over an open fire? No, you have not. The vast majority of Canadians don’t even know how to roast a chicken."

I got a good chuckle from that little section... it is so true!

"For some bizarre reason, I complained."

You can't be serious. You think it takes a bizarre reason for you to complain? Nothing that comes so naturally to someone requires a bizarre reason. It would be bizarre if you didn't complain.

Oh, you're being sardonic? Hmm.

I wasn't.

Too funny - I was just thinking this same thing over the weekend. You walk into any store or mall and there's a 50-50 chance the Andy Williams song will be playing.

You're really on yr game today, Bartley. More power to you and yr cause.


A cute article, but with everyone having ear buds stuck in their ears these days, I am wondering if they hear any Christmas music at all. Just like the previous commenter wrote, it all up to you. Radio stations a problem? Aren't we suppose to plug things into our cars now a days? Music has become so independent or personalized now, as everyone makes up their own lists. When's the last time you bought a CD?

I haven't heard one Christmas song on the radio yet, or maybe I have just blocked it out. But in reality, my hearing is going, so in 20 or so years we will just have to turn off our hearing aids and the problem is solved. So the music industry will still make the music, but we won't buy it, cause we can't hear it anyway.

The real place that I find the Christmas music overload is in the malls themselves. As soon as you enter a store, you hear the songs, and each and every store that you enter, you hear more and more. Stand in the mall, and over the din of human voices you can hear 3 or 4 different Christmas songs at once, and doesn't that muddle ones brain! I sometimes wonder how the Christmas help survives this 2 or 3 week onslaught, and wonder if these tunes dance in their heads as they sleep.

Maybe it isn't the crowds, or the parking problems that drive us crazy at these malls, but the droning on and on of this Christmas music. But, the younger generation already has shown a smart way to avoid this - by shopping on-line. Pat Martin stand down please!

Well done, sir. Another well written article. Now if we could only have double of your writing at the expense of Ms. Simard...

C'mon, Bartley; it's all up to you. How can someone who uses words like 'phalanx', and 'pastiche' be at the mercy of others' sonic choices? Control your environment. I loathe the genre too, but have the skills to avoid it successfully. Turn off the radio, avoid the malls, do not check the weather on television. Headphones? Hello? Problem solved. Noise pollution is too important an aggravating factor to be left to the government to solve, and they wouldn't solve it. They would limit it's play as to not alienate the Christmas music lovers' vote. Three weeks of Christmas music is much easier to both avoid and tolerate than four-plus warm months of cherry-bomb mufflers on Civics, or Harley Davidsons which you'd think, for $30,000+, would include a decent muffler. By all means, celebrate the birth of Christianity by purchasing a Wii, but also get a Walkman to control the din- if they still make AA batteries...

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