The First Noel

I got in my car this morning to go to work. Cranking the ignition, the radio came on simultaneously.  Pre-set to a classic rock station when I got home last night, I expected to hear Eric Clapton or The Eagles, or maybe even a commercial. But it wasn't any of that. Instead, The Ray Conniff Orchestra was serenading me with their way-too-perky version of, "We Need a Little Christmas".

Really?

My first reaction was WTF. My first printable reaction is, "Why? It didn’t make sense and, before putting the car in gear I checked my watch, just to make sure I hadn't slipped into some sort of weird time warp. To my relief, it was still 7:40 a.m. and still the 12^th. The 12th of November!

So did I really hear what I just heard? Here? In mid-November, with Halloween not even two weeks past and Thanksgiving still over two weeks away?  Really? I hoped maybe it was just a once an hour deal or, better yet, a mistake.  But it wasn’t. My station had made the conscious decision to go wall-to-wall Christmas music. Starting today. And continuing through midnight December 25th. But looking on the bright side, that’s only another month and a half. Oh joy. To the world, maybe. But not to me.

It's not that I'm a Scrooge or don't like Christmas and Christmas  music. I do. I love it. It’s just that I love it December. And the closer to Christmas, the better. But, please, not on November 12th. Not when there's still Halloween candy in the house. Not when it might hit 70 degrees today. Not when I have yet to get sick from the Thanksgiving meal I haven't eaten yet.

Growing up, I don’t ever remember hearing Christmas music in November, certainly not until after Thanksgiving. But either to score points with advertisers or be first to lock up that elusive fourth quarter demographic- and in case you don’t know if you’re part of that group of not, as determined by Madison Avenue if you’re loopy enough to wait in line in freezing weather to start shopping at 12:01 Black Friday morning than you are- radio stations have somehow determined that pushing Christmas music on us earlier and earlier, is somehow better and better. The way it's going, pretty soon Christmas in July will mean something more than just an outdated mid-summer retail sales campaign.

But if some corporate broadcasting geek somewhere thinks it's a good idea to start playing Christmas music today then it must mean its close enough to Christmas to get away with it. That also means its close enough to know I'm not anywhere close to being ready for it. It makes my head want about to explode thinking about it. And I’m not. There's too much to do, not enough time to do it and every waking minute from now till the end of the year is already spoken for.

So, once again I'm afraid this special time of year is going to slip by so quick I'll miss it. It'll come and go in the blink of an eye and I'll miss what it's really all about--which has everything to do with a baby and absolutely nothing to do with how much stuff I can put on my Visa Card. 

Of course I can always change the radio station. And I have. And I'm not saying a little premature yuletide spirit is a bad thing, either. I just wish it could wait until after I've choked down at least one left-over turkey sandwich. Till all the leaves have fallen. Till the pumpkin pie is all gone. Till Kohl's and Best Buy aren't receiving customers at 3 a.m. Till it doesn’t feel like springtime anymore which it does today here in balmy Northern California.

And really, how many versions of "Sleigh Ride" can there possibly be? Not that I care, but I I’d wager two turtle doves and a box of tinsel that some nameless musicologist somewhere probably has the exact figure located somewhere in his database. And by December 26^th, I’m sure the rest of us will know, too, having been forced to hear them all of them several times over. And over. Arrrrggg!!!

So who's to blame for all this torment? Well, for today anyway, I blame you, Mr. Jump-the-Gun radio programming dude. You're not very nice for making me hear Wham's! insipid "Last Christmas"  way before I was ready!  I didn’t like it in 1985 and nothing’s changed in the 25 Christmas’s since. I still don’t like it. By now I may even loathe it. So lumps of coal to you. In fact, the next time that stupid song comes on, I may reach through the radio, yank George's Micheal's creepy tonsils out and imagine I’m tearing them out of you! So go ahead, play it again. Go on. I triple dog dare ya.

Oh, by the way, Merry Christmas.