I think we just have beat the holiday to death.
It pretty much starts the day after thanksgiving, much earlier if you're a retailer now. Then you have all the gift hunting which, for adults is misery since adults generally buy what they want themselves. Then there are all the semi-mandatory Christmas events that every single organization whether work, school, church, volunteer organization, or club seems to need to have now. Then for many you have to drag yourself out to whatever location the family Christmas event is.
Of course as mentioned before it's the same exact movies and music we've heard every year for our entire lives since little of that ever changes. I personally just tune as much of it out as I can.
It was much more fun as a kid but it ends up being so much work as an adult. It's not a bad little holiday but I think we just overdo it to the point it stops being as much fun. Why can't we just have our nice holiday meal with our family and have a couple days to relax at home and just have that be it?
You get it. This is what I’m saying. Joy, good will, melancholy all are feelings that need to come from within and used to in the old days at Christmas time, but because of cheapening, and commercial interests and influence, incessant and manipulative marketing, it’s gotten to be a parade of itself for me.
I am interested to know, the typical rotation here is like “Jungle bell rock”, Mariah Carey “all I want for Christmas”, “Driving home for Christmas”, a really old corny version (with whistling between the teeth solo) of “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”, that Irish ballad (New York...something...sounds like the guy is strung out in the beginning and then eventually into a totally cliche Irish “real”), “Santa Baby” (boom oop e do), a few actual Norwegian Xmas sings with simple melody and about ten verses, a overly sentimental song from a Norwegian artist about “I want to go home, for Christmas, let me go home again” that is actually pretty, but yeh lyrics make no sense because one wonders who the hell is stopping her, both Norwegian and American versions of “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” etc. etc.
How much of this do you guys get peppered with?
And I have to admit, they are great at hooks. Because any one of those can invade my brain and stay with me for the better part of a day. I try the ear worm technique of playing it “all the easy through” in my mind, but it doesn’t seem to work.
I do still have affinity from my own childhood where I can remember laying under the dining room table listening to my mother and father play the radio, and hearing Bing Crosby both “little drummer boy” and even more the “silent night”. And a few other songs.
I know it seems like I’m complaining, but actually I’m really curious as to how many, how common this feeling is. I am a person of good cheer, I help others, I contribute, and I love the world, but I really have a hard time with this forced “good cheer” specially when it is very clearly marketing and money. To me most of it is the antithesis of actual good will to all, and also anti-music with gimmicky, corny music.
I can’t do anything to change it, but I do get to kind of mourn that we have come to this, and resist it, as we turn a wonderful idea into just another profit market, and certainly folk have been saying this since it became what it is now (which is surprising to most, how the “traditions” developed) and got over killed.
still, each and every one of us can save it or turn it around if we just treat it the right way. If I could just get my wife to turn off the radio now and then. We still can make a great Xmas feeling.
