Merry Christmas (Songs are Over) I just noticed the office radio has magically spun itself away from the all-christmas station, which is a triumph of human dignity and compassion!→[More:]
My feeling is that no one really wants to listen to Christmas music all the time, but there's always one (or maybe one and a half) person who feels a sense of duty to flip that thing. They'll throw a fuss when you warn them of the danger because they suffer from our society's failure to utilize memory as an effective survival tool. Oh, they remember; they remember that if they want to succeed they will have to spin that dial quietly, like thieves in the night. As you have possibly experienced personally though, this strategy is like running naked and bleeding (and definitely not pretending to be larger than one actually is) into a den of bears. The great, inevitable but overwhelmingly sad truth is that once the music has changed, the only person who we collectively feel may change it back is the switcher. After a day, everyone is miserable. However, the switcher wants not to admit Christmas' defeat especially since it is getting so close to the time when unrelenting Christmas music is actually, somewhat appropriate. The rest of us don't want to ruin anybody's Christmas dream so we suffer; you don't tell little kids why "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" isn't about infidelity and you don't tell the switcher that their music selection is like winter water boarding. Today is the hope -- that eventually some brave soul will have perfectly gauged the switcher's own switch in temperament and quickly, desperately turn anything else on. It's breaking all the rules, but it is a collective acceptance of the breaking of the rules. It sounds almost like silence when it happens; you don't even notice. It is like a caress after having your arm sawed off, the absence of pain is the only thing you can feel.

So, as I realized I was singing along with Cat Stevens and not praying to become deaf, I felt the true joy of the season fill my soul. Merry Christmas, radio! Merry Christmas, DJ! Merry Christmas to all!

Here are the very most painful things I have experienced far too many times:

-Pachabel's Canon in Children Singing About Christmas
-The Jing-jing-jingly song with the horse noises
-"Last Christmas I gave you my heart / the very next day you gave it away"
-That Paul McCartney one whose name must not be spoken (although, I hear the Jars of Clay variation is amazing in its tolerability)
-Santa Baby.

I'm sorry. I had to get this out.