How do you count “jingle bells”? I think if that as a Thanksgiving song.
I concur, but we do get almost two months of seasonal songs, so that’s not too bad. And i wasnt sure how to count the two Hanukkah songs we sometimes hear.
My “official” date for the start of the Season is Nov 8, which is when Disneyland puts up it’s Christmas stuff. 
puzzlegal Jingle Bells is a seasonal song. No mention of anything Christmas.
Are you thinking of “over the river and through the woods,” perhaps?
It is often arranged for recorded light background music played through speakers in public places, a style of music that doesn’t bear active listening. It’s repetitive, simplistic, (both in the music and the lyrics) has no vocal range, and doesn’t engage the mind.
It’s like having a co-worker who must talk about her kid, but has nothing to say beyond “rum pa-pa pum”. Sorry ma’am. Your kid may be cute in person, but after the first time I don’t want to hear that story any more.
I can tolerate ethnic winter holiday songs with unfamiliar tunes in unknown languages. I have heard the usual schlock for many many decades now – makes me want to throw my walker at store loudspeakers. Is that an OK BOOMER moment? Or I think of a U.C. Berkeley song mentioning Oski the mascot bear, sung to the Thanksgiving tune Jingle Bells:
Oski dolls, pom-pom girls
U.C. all the way!
Oh what fun it is to have
Your mind reduced to clay-AY!
Or of course, to Winter Wonderland:
Lacey things, the wife is missing.
Didn’t ask, for her permission.
I’m wearing her clothes, her silk pantyhose.
Walking 'round in women’s underwear.
Make the drummer boy a cross-dresser FTW!
Where is everyone hearing TLDB being played over and over? Not on any of the three Christmas-themed radio stations around here. Not at the shopping center nearby. Indeed I do not think I have even heard it once this year on any of the peripheral Christmas music sources. But I have experienced, for example, multiple Winter Wonderlands and Frostys.
And I think the amount of music played as light background but also engages the mind is not an especially large subset of that kind of music.
I realize it’s old, but I think XKCD has it right about the repetition. xkcd: Tradition For what it’s worth, I’ve never liked this song, even as a kid.
[quote=“Melbourne, post:104, topic:843807”]
I It’s repetitive, simplistic, (both in the music and the lyrics) has no vocal range, and doesn’t engage the mind.
[QUOTE]
The music itself is repetitive.
I don’t hear TLDB being played over and over: I only hear it a half-dozen times over the Christmas season. But after the first verse I don’t want to hear any more.
Me and my best friend in high school were making up song verses, as we liked to do. I don’t remember which of us came up with this alternate ending to this song:
“…Then He smiled at me, parum pa pum pum,
Me and my drum.”
“Mary said it was gas, parum pa pum pum.
I kicked her in the ass, parum pa pum pum.”
That was when my friend’s came in and yelled at us for making fun of a religious song. My friend challenged her mom to find the little drummer boy in the Bible. Her mom went off defeated, but still mad. I was impressed with my best friend’s quick-witted argument. But she was never terrified by the thought of pissing off her mom like I was about pissing off mine. Especially about religion.
[quote=“Melbourne, post:108, topic:843807”]
[quote=“Melbourne, post:104, topic:843807”]
I It’s repetitive, simplistic, (both in the music and the lyrics) has no vocal range, and doesn’t engage the mind.
You want repetition? Try that super-annoying Happy Elf song. One year the Christmas muzak at work played that about every three hours. I wanted to take a machete to the stupid elf by the end of the season.
On the plus side the muzak station did introduce me to I Believe in Father Christmas.
Seconded!
The Manhattan Transfer version seriously sets my teeth on edge.
Actually, a lot of carols are about winter and snow rather than Jesus. For example, Winter wonderland. But you can find some really hardcore religious carols if you look, and especially in other languages.
Whichever language they are in, they get repeated. Ad nauseam. The nausea comes quicker if it is a title that you don’t like. In my case, TLDB.
I agree with this. Badly written song. Endless repetition of an annoying motif. Saccharine lyrics. My hatred of this song is not misplaced.
I’ve got – issues – with “DYHWIH”. Why doesn’t the shepherd boy tell the mighty king “Guess what? I’ve got a talking lamb!” No, instead he basically says “Hey, why don’t you give a bunch of silver and gold to this baby and say it’s from both of us?”
And why does Whitney Houston skip the Night Wind verse?
Have people posted the Pentatonix version of this song yet? Because it was my first exposure to the song, and… damn, it’s good.
Not badly written. This song has been recorded over and over again for a reason. It resonates with a lot of people and, as numerous examples in this thread have shown, can be interpreted and performed in interesting creative and compelling ways. TLDB is meant to have a simple outward veneer but the dichotomies of wealth and poverty, power and powerlessness, king and baby, holy birth and stable are the whole point of the Christmas story. Others arrive with gold, frankincense and myrrh. This child has nothing. No silver and gold. Yet the child’s only gift, his expression of love, is accepted with a smile.
I am not particularly religious anymore but my upbringing in Sunday School and family taught me that the lowly beginnings of Jesus were important. The savior of mankind began life in the humblest of surroundings. Very few of the supposedly less saccharine religious carols delve directly into that mystery like TLDB. It’s not about joy to the world or hark the herald. It’s about us coming to that stable with nothing to give, but being loved just the same. It is a mystery that is the exact opposite of the depressing overshopping Black Friday madness that pretty much drowns out anything holy about Christmas. In that way TLDB is actually subversive to the gorging shopping meccas of the world and it is not surprising that it has been replaced by songs like “My Favorite Things.”
You do not need any gifts at all to show love. Let the gift be of yourself. If that is too saccharine then so be it. I maintain there are many holiday tunes more worthy of your scorn.
I quite enjoyed that one. It is good.
This version from Sorrow is worthy of attention.
Opinion.
Fallacy. Argumentum ad populum.
And regardless of the merits of the underlying theme, aesthetically, the music and lyrics vile assault on my senses.
Yes opinion. I continue to argue the simplicity is a strength of the song and that art need not be obscure and impenetrable to be good. I am sorry TLDB assaults your senses more than Jingle Bells Rock and Feliz Navidad.
In the spirit of the season I wish you a merry holiday full of Mele Kalikimaka, Last Christmas, Wonderful Christmastime, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Holly Jolly Christmas and Run Rudolph. 
Wait! Is this My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music? That’s now a Christmas song in the US? As in not a song in an advertisement, but a standalone Christmas song?