They’re grinches, plain and simple. 
If the problem were “I can’t find Christmas music I enjoy” those threads might help. Alas, the problem is "I can’t avoid hearing the same songs that I am sick of over and over again. The existence of other music doesn’t really do anything about that. 
Or Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.
Because it’s not necessarily good music. Once a year a whole segment of the population acts like obsessive fans of Dan Brown or Nickelback, love love LOVing something you know is absolute crap. Like Sturgeon once said, maybe <10% of it is actually good music, but the 90% pursues you like tinsel-festooned dementers whenever you leave the safety of your home.
Like all agenda-driven art–whether the agenda is political or commercial–Christmas music insists upon itself, every bit as clumsily as a folk anthem pushing a political agenda. Its like when an obnoxious relative tells you to smile when you don’t feel like smiling. It’s equal parts propaganda emotional manipulation.
But none of that matters: when something that’s 90% crap is inescapable, the world can feel like a hostile place.
I can’t stand Xmas music for reasons which have been fulsomely described in this thread. Keep Fairy Tale Of New York and Stop The Cavalry, which I’ll enjoy if they are played a couple of times each, and bin the rest. I agree with Procrustus, but take issue on one point (and this is perhaps a local-to-the-UK issue):
Would that it were a month. As I noted in my personal FFS-Don’t-Start-Xmas-In-August thread, it’s much worse than that.
UK TV station Sony Movies Classic underwent a seasonal (I hope!) rebranding and relaunched as Sony Movies Christmas. On September 24th .
Non-stop Xmas. If they reverted to the original name and mission on Xmas day, that would peg Xmas as A QUARTER OF THE YEAR. But they don’t, it’s worse than that - we have a listings mag which covers into the new year, and they’re still going in January.
Sorry. To return to the OP, yeah, small playlist of awful songs repeated continuously for what feels like forever - because it very nearly is.
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ETA - and I agree with @lissener as well.
How about the simple fact that more than a quarter of the population is not Christian and may not appreciate being told that Jesus is Lord every five minutes for two months.
Christians probably don’t think of this as a steady stream of microaggressions but that’s because they can’t see outside their own upbringings.
Yes, I know that some non-Christians celebrate Christmas. Some is not all.
It’s overplayed and inescapable for a month and a half. If it didn’t start until Dec. 22 every year, I might actually enjoy it.
Fair point, though a lot of the most popular Christmas songs aren’t religous songs – some mention the name of the holiday, but otherwise don’t have any other religious message (e.g., All I Want for Christmas Is You, White Christmas), while others don’t even mention Christmas at all (e.g., Jingle Bell Rock, Winter Wonderland, etc.)
I never really cared for Christmas music in the first place, but I truly came to loathe it over the decade I worked in restaurants. As others have said, it’s not good to begin with, it’s overplayed from November (sometimes even October) through January, and unlike regular overplayed hits, it comes back every year. My parents and I are atheists, though we still celebrate Christmas, and I don’t mind their playing traditional carols on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But if I never have to hear “Santa Baby” ever again it will be too soon.
Good point. Most annoying hits are only played repeatedly for a few months, unless you’re tuned in to some oldies channel. At Christmas I have to listen again to songs I’ve hated for 50 years.
Repetition of the same songs by the same artists is the chief culprit, as has often been mentioned. When I began my radio career in the early 1970s, every station had a Christmas Box, consisting of a few dozen 45 rpm singles that they sprinkled in with the regular format tunes for about two weeks leading up to Christmas, and ending at noon on Christmas day. Though there were variations, most were the usual suspects, the “classics.” In the 80s, many stations began questioning the wisdom of playing artists from 40 or 50 years ago that they would never ordinarily play. That’s when they started releasing those “Very Special Christmas” LPs, with people like Stevie Nicks warbling “Silent Night” and sounding like she’s just come off an all night bender. Nonetheless, they caught on. With more music thus available, soon it led to stations switching to wall-to-wall Christmas and enjoying unheard-of ratings spikes. I worked for two stations that did it quite successfully. Since I mostly worked weekends in the last 20 years of my radio career, I didn’t really tire of the music, and enjoyed playing Sinatra, Cole, Bennett, Crosby, Autry, Williams and the like. It was a refreshing change. Some of the more contemporary tunes grated on me, but that’s what the monitor volume control is for. I must admit, however, that if I’m in a store and have to endure that dreadful shoe song, I wish I had a volume knob to turn.
I thought at first I was having a flashback to this thread from last year, but I see now that that one was specifically about the Little Drummer boy.
For some people X-Mas can get incredibly stabby, and don’t wish to relive that horror.
I dislike manufactured sentiment, and most Christmas music is cynically produced, insipid dreck. The stuff sells and gets played every year, so each fall there are new Christmas albums as it is a reliable money maker for the artists and labels.
While I enjoy a few recordings of Christmas songs, I don’t need to hear tired remakes of the same warhorses OVER AND OVER. I took my daughter to Michael’s on Sunday, and they were playing Christmas music. One recording was a somewhat doo-wopish version of “White Christmas,” an obvious rip off of the Drifters. While I like the Drifters version, this one was bad.
I like Gene Autry’s version of Rudolph, but I don’t need to hear Alan Jackson sing it.
I’ve come to dread Christmas. One radio station plays Christmas music 24/7 starting on All Saint’s Day. If I never hear Wham’s “Last Christmas” again that would help.
Imagine two months of the same 25 top Taylor Swift hits, played incessantly, everywhere you go, every single year. If you’re a Taylor Swift fan, you enjoy it and wonder what all the griping is about. If you’re not a Taylor Swift fan, it becomes torture.
That, plus the whole “not my religion” stuff.
The birth of Christ I could deal with. It’s the attempt to separate my money from my wallet that I could do without. On the other hand, I don’t mind the music. If only the pressure to buy junk nobody needs anyway to wasn’t there.
More than anything it’s the repetition. I work next door to a dance studio and every year around this time I fantasize about building a time machine so I can smother baby Tchaikovsky in his crib.
The suits ruined it the same way they’ve ruined the internet and everything else they discovered they could make 5 cents off. These days Christmas seems to represent greed more than anything else. Decorations go up the day after Halloween (day after Thanksgiving stateside) and we’re bombarded with Christmas music onward from December 1st at latest. A form of torture to the poor folks working the shop floor. Few of the ass----- responsible have ever worked a cash register in their life so it isn’t turning their brains to mush. What do they care.
The day after New Years, Valentine sales will take center stage and on we go through another year of being pressured to spend our last dime on useless trinkets & greeting cards. And those that resist? Well, they’re just party poopers is all. In the workplace these would be those that management calls out for having a ‘bad attitude’.
And speaking of Holy Christ! This year we have droves risking their health & possibly their lives to mingle with the minions and spend money they don’t have.
I am quite fond of religious Christmas music (O Come O Come Emmanuel, O Holy Night, etc.). In church, where it is at home. There is some glorious choir music for the feast of Christmas.
Regurgitated 1940’s pap or 1970’s soft rock is not my idea of enjoyable music at any time of the year. Repeating it doesn’t improve it.
Getting back a little closer to topic; do you think celebrity musicians release Christmas albums because they’re big fans of that style of music? Hell no! They make these albums because they know dumb asses will keep buying it year after year and it will support them until they die. And their families after that.