2018 Holiday Music Pit

The BBQ Pit
#1

Yea, it’s early for this. That’s the problem. To hell with businesses that play holiday music before Thanksgiving. In the last two days I have been in two restaurants, one a medium price table service establishment, the other a fast food joint. Both were playing Christmas holiday music.

These are friggin’ eating establishments, not retail stores that are trying to get you into the spending spirit.

Actually, I tend to like holiday music . . . the week before Christmas. Listening to the same songs over and over this early is beyond annoying. And yes, I did let them know my displeasure.

#2

In the early sixties Charles Schulz published a small book of cartoons about the Christmas holiday, featuring the Peanuts characters.

One had Linus holding his head in pain, and the caption stated “Christmas is hearing about those partridges and pear trees until you’re ready to lost your mind!”

#3

My holiday music rant is almost the opposite. I went the whole month of October without hearing Werewolves of London once.

#4

I didn’t hear Monster Mash. I think I heard Season of the Witch, so that was good.

#5

Early morning November 1, started the car with the dial set to the pop radio station I suffer these days since “talk radio” takes over all the good rock stations in my area in the mornings.

JUSTHEARTHOSESLEIGHBELLSRINGADINGRINGADINGADINGDING.

Uggh. They’ve taken over THREE local stations already.

#6

Not all early Christmas music is bad.

#7

I didn’t hear it either! And a little old lady got mutilated late last night!! :smiley:

For awful Xmas music, do what I do: Crank Slayer. Any album. It’s only for two months. I keep Testament as a backup in the car, CD, old style, no chance of xmas-themed commercials.

#8

Grinch Army, mobilize!

(I received a Purple Heart last year for repeated stab wounds to the sanity).

#9

I support this pitting.

#10

As do I. A twenty-four year career in retail sales has completely killed any enjoyment I take in Christmas music. My company has an internal social media site where associates from all over the country can talk; and we’re already, all of us, flinching and shuddering about the imminent psychological torture we face the day after Thanksgiving.

On that site, the memetic universally-hated glurge is “Marshmallow World “, but personally, I find all 137 versions of “Winter Wonderland” I’ll be forced to endure to be what makes me want to drive 2p nails into my ears.

#11

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

I would rather hear Christmas music then the same exact crap playlist our store broadcasts every day the other 10 months of the year.

#12

While it wasn’t Christmas music yet, there were fucking candy canes by the registers at CVS on the first. Now, I know retail floor creep happens and there just isn’t enough Thanksgiving crap to fill up allllllll that Halloween space for a few weeks. But there’s a difference between swapping out skeletons for santas in an aisle and putting crap right as you walk in and pay. No. Back, back I say until at least we eat too much turkey in three weeks.

In yet another example of why Kmart is floundering, they had their Christmas trees up a month ago.

But I haven’t heard the carols yet. I love carols. I can listen to them all day every day… IN DECEMBER.

#13

Not me. I’d much rather hear pop bubblegum that I haven’t been hearing for decades. Don’t know what Christmas station your store plays, but at mine, it’s apparently called “Christmas Hits of 1953!” Rosemary Fucking Clooney, Burl Fucking Ives, Johnny Fucking Mathis, Dean Fucking Martin. I don’t think I hear a song by a singer who’s still alive all month.

These songs are older than I am, and I have heard them almost literally all my life. I am deeply. Deeply. DEEPLY. sick of them.

#14

If you had to listen to the same mix of music** every single day **of your work life, 44 weeks of “Need You Now,” 44 weeks of “Counting Stars,” 44 weeks of “The Best Day of My Life”, then you would beg for that 8 weeks of Santa.

#15

What’s irritating about hearing these tunes this early is that these establishments are not playing it to enhance holiday cheer; it is the anthem of commerce, and the earlier they start triggering the spending hormones the better.

#16

I’ve often wondered how people who work in environments that have piped-in music stand it. Do you just dial that shit out of your brain? The only thing I found worse is the one time I checked in at the hotel next to the dog track and casino on Wheeling Island in West Virginia. The hotel receptionists were stationed in the same space as the slot machines. The electronic racket from those would have driven me to drastic measures before the first day was out.

I have tinnitus pretty bad and I’d prefer listen to that before those machines.

#17

There’s a rock station in my town that always starts playing Christmas music on November 1st. Someone must be listening to it, or they wouldn’t play it.

The weirdest thing I’ve ever heard on overhead music? Back when I worked at the grocery store, we had over 100 channels to choose from, and one night, the stockers turned it to 1970s progressive, and I opened the pharmacy at 7:55am to this. Listen at your own risk. :stuck_out_tongue:

I've never taken hallucinogens, but it almost made me want to.

We later heard the 17-minute version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The other pharmacist, who was about 15 years older than me, started to tell me the story behind it; I replied that I already knew it.

Another time, someone turned it to country gospel AND bumped it to full volume. Anne Murray’s “In The Garden” just does not sound good that way.

#18

That’s what I’ve always thought, but surprisingly my “keep Christ in CHRISTmas” side of the family can’t get enough of it. According to Facebook, they even started cranking out Christmas cookies on November 1st.

I’m personally irritated at SiriusXM for displacing two channels to play Christmas music – one is ancient dreck with a rather heavy emphasis on “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, and the other is modern pop crap. I pass both channels while channel surfing, so I’m stuck listening to snippets of both unless I want to just stick to preset buttons for the season.

I do have a small personal selection of Christmas music; it doesn’t go on the iPod until it’s time to put up the trees though.

#19

I endorse this disendorsement.

#20

France and Spain do Halloween but nowhere near to the extent the US does. I’ve been seeing the Christmas stuff in supermarkets for over a month. At one of them (which has another one across the street and two more within spitting distance), a customer told the women setting up a pyramid of Christmas sweets “please please please tell me you are NOT switching from the radio to carols yet, because if you do I’ll cross the street!” “Unless they are playing carols, you mean…? No, we’re not doing that; after all, we do spend 9 hours a day here!”