Cowgirl, why don’t you suggest to whomever is in charge of the music that some variation might be nice? There are lots of carols and they could use it to boost sales. Plus there’s all sorts of other Christmas music they can use.
I live like a hermit these days and I’ve not pulled out my Christmas music yet. I have a nice little collection of “traditional” music—you know, Arthur Fiedler, Robert Shaw Chorale, that kind of thing. Great stuff.
All I have now (loaded up in iTunes) is the complete Handel’s Messiah. Two CD’s worth. I am listening to it now. I listen to it a lot. It’s what I’ve got on hand, and I do love the Messiah.
I don’t know what I’d do if I had to listen to it for 8 hours a day at work, though. I love Christmas music, but if it were constantly repeated, day after day, I’d pop a cork.
There is actually lots and lots of christmas music if you go looking for it. When I was a teenager, my parents ran a ski school, and my mother decided christmas music was snow music. She figured it would snow more if she played Christmas carols, so the snow music started along about the end of october and continued through March. The other thing was she figured that if she played the same stuff over and over it would get stale and lose its magic. This meant the collection got added to every year. (The amount of paganism built into that sort of astounds me now, come to think of it.)
Anyway, my step-father would have probably commited random acts of violence for the chipmunks and Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. Bing Crosby was only vaguely acceptable for him. (His mother was a concert violinist.) This meant that there was a lot of good music. By the time they left the ski school they had something like 120 cds of christmas music. Stuff ranging from the Viena Boys Choir, through Pavarati, through Bing Crosby ( Mom insisted.) There were a couple cds with the complete Handel’s Messiah and all of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas albums and Both Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums. A person could be in that house for pretty much three weeks without hearing the same thing twice. It is almost sort of sad now that they have gone to a more regular version of christmas music listening, because some stuff doesn’t come to the top often enough.
Unfortunatly, in malls they have the stupid 70 minute loop, and God forbid they put anything older than Bing Crosby on the thing just in case someone doesn’t recognise it. It does a disservice to the wealth of music that is actualy out there, and does go to drive employees nuts.
Guin, the boyfriend’s had that on WinAmp for the last three weeks. It’s driving me crazy with the Merman Babies singing style…
And I just heard a Li’l Kim Christmas song the other day. Talk about Ho, ho, hos…
I still have traumatic flashbacks to being stuck for an hour in a Hallmark (trying to buy some freakin’ ribbon and tissue paper) with Dolly Parton singing “Winter Wonderland”.
On repeat.
The entire time.
Friends laugh at how I apparently involuntarily twitch when that song comes on.
You know why you hear Christmas music from November on? Because of people like me. I can’t get enough Christmas music!
Trans-Siberian orchestra? Love it!
Chipmunks Christmas? Bring it on!
Mariah Carey? Maybe not my first choice, but great!
Boney M? Boney-fucking-M’s disco Christmas album? I’m listening to it right now!
Think I’ll cook myself up a figgy fucking pudding.
The CD player where I work for some reason always gets stuck on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” whenever my boss puts the player on repeat. I was in the kitchen the other day fantasizing about being Stanley Kubirck so I could put it in the “in-out” scen from A Clockwork Orange and ruin it for everyone else. Such are the lengths to which the repeat has driven me.
Guinastasia, you mentioned my favorite non-traditional song! I was singing it for my coworkers yesterday, and one of the attorneys walked down the hall. The look I got was priceless. “I heard…something about a hippopotamus???”
That being said, I like Christmas music – when I choose the music. I hate, hate, hate being subjected to someone else’s choices of it. And any Christmas song sung by a pop artist since Bing Crosby sucks.
Merry fucking Christmas to you all, too.
Mama Tiger do you like the version of * Little Drummer Boy* with Bing Crosby and David Bowie. I detest that song but love that version. Just wondering if it counted. Some of the Very Special Christmas albums have some good cuts, the problem is that it is like one song per album. I think i may have to burn a cd to get rid of the rest. One can live forever and ever without hearing Madona sing Santa Baby I appoligise to anyone who needs to go scrub their ears out with steel wool from that aural impression.
Absolutely. I much prefer Eartha Kitt’s version of Santa Baby. Purrrrrr…
Okay, I can go along with dumping most of it, but there’s one song that tells me it’s Christmas time, and if I can’t hear it, well, my holiday is ruined, ruined I tell ya.
Oh, the song? Why, Stop the Cavalry, of course. I know, I know, most people have never heard it, but it’s popular up here in Seattle.
I’m already at the point where Christmas music sends me pretty damn close to a homocidal rage, and that’s just from the radio airplay. I do like Blink 182’s “I Won’t Be Home For Christmas”, though:
“It’s Christmas time again
It’s time to be nice to the people you can’t stand
All year
I’m growing tired of all this Christmas cheer
You people scare me
Please stay away from my home
If you don’t wanna get beat down
Just leave the presents and then leave me alone”
Warms the cockles of my cold, dark heart it does. 
Suzene
Don’t forget Mannheim Steamroller! I love their version of Deck the Halls and God Rest You Merry, Gentlmen, and Fum Fum Fum…
You can’t get sick of Chip Davis and Mannheim Steamroller, people. C’mon!
I’ll grant you that one, furlibusea (even though I’ve never heard it that I know of) just because Bing Crosby is on it. But that’s it. Even Mannheim Steamroller gets old real fast with it as a steady diet.
I will confess to liking one Christmas song: “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” But only because of the awesome Office Depot (or Staples?) back-to-school commercial of a few Augusts ago, with the dad dancing through the aisles and the miserable-looking kids