[QUOTE=MsRobyn]
I’d like to point out that most of the people in the thread are or were Christians.
[QUOTE]
True, I was raised Lutheran. That didn’t affect my musical taste except my dislike of singing in sacred music. The choir at my parents’ church? Could not carry a tune in a reinforced bucket.
Have a cookie.
This would be classified under Your Problem, not Everyone Else’s Problem.
So listen to your damn iPod and quit bitching.
Christmas music starting earlier? When I was in 8th grade, lo these many years ago, I came into algebra one morning and, instead of covering the board with incomprehensible equations, the teacher wrote the words to “Marshmallow World” and taught us all to sing it.
This, mind you, was in the month of October. Way back in 1962.
I hated winter even then so was not wild about learning seasonal music, and even in a class where a bit of seasonal music might be expected (like, say, band?) it would have seemed awfully early in the year–but at least it wasn’t algebra so I was grateful for that. I lived in a place where there was not the remotest chance it would ever resemble a marshmallow world in the winter. It was kind of bizarre. We learned the song for a couple of days and then went back to algebra. I have no idea why.
PS for whoever’s totting up replies, non-Christian, non-religious, hate the music, but I get annoyed by music in places where I shop all year around and have pretty much learned to tune it out.
I’m not sure sure which catagory this would fit into, but any store that plays Loren Graham screaming “Fuck me, Santa…Fuck me, Santa…!” in a continuous semi-orgasmic riff gets my holiday shopping dollar. 
Funny, she never has a second cup at home…
Yeh, same here. (For the record: raised Congregationalist; atheist now). Some Christmas music, in small doses and at my pleasure, is lovely. But the dreck in the commercial sphere is dreadful. No, thank you, I do not care to conduct my business to a constant soundtrack.
As to gifts, well, those closest to me often manage to hit it just right, for which I am grateful. My solution to the gift-giving dilemma these days is to bake goodies – cookies, sweet breads, Anadama loaves, brownies, etc. – and give those instead of store-bought stuff. Everyone’s happy and it keeps me out of the stores.
In Philly, we had a station, 104.5 FM, that used to play “the best hits of the '80’s, '90’s, and today!” that was called STAR, Alice, and later Sunny (and started to focus on soft, Carpenters style stuff) that started playing 24-hour Christmas music right after Halloween night for the last two years.
Not this year though, earlier in the year it became all Latin, all the time.
And one of those Christians liked the Christmas music while not identifying as a Christian.
For your same reasons – 'cause the non-secular music DIDN’T SUCK.
I think mostly it doesn’t suck because it seems to have been written with actual, well, soul and feeling and meaning behind it. Meaning, that is, beyond “Let’s write a song about the shopping season!”
My sentiments exactly. Pagan here, but find “XYZ Store Radio” to be utterly annoying year-round, & Christmas music no more or less than the rest of it. (Bolding in HNS’s quote mine).
That said, I do like a number of season-related hymns & songs, but not on Nov 1st. In my retail experience (vast!), Christmas songs were mixed on about a 1:3 ratio starting in Week 2 of November, & gradually going to more and more “Holiday only” for the full 6-ish weeks of Christmas selling. It also depended upon how much shopping time existed between Black Friday and Christmas. On years where Thanksgiving was earlier (such as this year) and there are a full 4 weeks, PLUS, of shopping days prior to Christmas, Christmas tunes were started a bit later than usual, maybe Week 3 Of November. Seems that isn’t the case retail-wide anymore, but my current weekend retail job is doing exactly that. No Christmas tunes until the 20th there, thankfully.
–Beck
I’m on Ms Robyn’s side. The fuck is wrong with some of you? You’re pissed off that a Jewish person doesn’t shop at places that blast Christian music for 2 months of the year. You’re shrieking because she makes choices about where to shop, and because you find it offensive that she finds it offensive that as far as the PA systems of American retail locations are concerned, there is no other religion but Christianity.
It’s not just that they play it, but that they never play anything else. No other religion, or atheism, gets the tiniest fraction of a percent of as much airtime.
I swear, this place is full of good fucking Germans. “Shut up, stop complaining, it’s totally uncool to get mad about stuff, just shut up and shop, and don’t think, don’t question, definitely don’t ever complain, don’t you know caring is unfashionable this year?”
And then you all sit around rubbing each other’s wet spots and talking about how awful the war is. Don’t you get it? This shit matters up and down the line. 24 hours of Jesus music and dead Iraqi babies exist in the same equation. It’s not a direct line, but there are no direct lines, badly as you all want to point at one or two politicians and cry wolf. There are just a lot of small things adding up to some very big ones. You don’t have to eliminate the Jesus music to take it out of that bloody equation, but you do have to talk about it, and respond to it financially, socially, personally.
The power of 24 Hour Jesus – and I’m a very recently ex-Catholic here, no Jesus-hater me, but my eyes are open now – the incredible hold 24 Hour Jesus has over this country is unfuckingreal. You’re all tripping over each other’s dicks to sneer at the very idea that someone might object, and most of you don’t even believe in Jebus.
The real religious Christmas music is indeed better. This is because religion has its values. But it is at its most valuable when no one religion can dominate everything in its path. I think the more religions we have, the less power religion has over us, and the more good we can extract from it. Anything that opposes this towering Jesus obsession is just fine by me.
When I was a boy, back in the 1950s, I was the only Jew in my grade. We sang Christmas carols in school. Not just Frosty the Snowman, but all the songs about the little Lord Jesus in his cradle, and joy to the world for the Lord has come and glory to the newborn king. Jesus is not my lord and not my king. Imagine if you were a kid in a class and they were all singing a Klu Klux Klan song about purifying the white race? or a black rap song about killing honkies?
When I kept my mouth shut, my friends asked me, “What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you American?” I wound up mouthing the words so they’d think I was singing, feeling pretty horrible about the whole thing. This went on every year until I was in high school and didn’t have to take music classes any more.
I’m very grateful that the schools stopped that practice.
One year, the Boy Scout group I was in went to Easter Services. I went, partly to see what it was, and partly because I didn’t want to be the only kid not going. I sat there and listened to the preacher orate about how the Jews killed our Lord. I felt like everyone was watching me and holding me personally responsible. I dropped out of the Boy Scouts shortly thereafter.
I don’t need to go to a place where I’m going to be uncomfortable. So, I’m firmly with Ms Robyn on this.
American society has become more tolerant of minorities. We don’t have stereotyped blacks or Japanese entertainers anymore, either. We learned that such entertainers are offensive to a segment of the population, and so we’ve stopped them. If you found a store playing Third Reich music about the master race, you’d probably decide not to shop there.
Those who want that kind of music, or Christian hymns, or Klu Klux Klan paeans to racial purity, or atheist songs, or whatever, are welcome to them. No one is trying to impose censorship. We’re only saying that such songs do NOT belong in public tax-payer-owned buildings like schools or government. And that if a shopkeeper wants to play them, we have the right not to go into that shop.
Actually I am a Christian. I am not by any means a Bible thumper or even a regular churchgoer. More of a personal thing. (I don’t think I’ve ever typed that sentence before!)
You asked for it… and you’ll be sorry (the link is on the page, it’s in RealAudio). I burst out laughing at the end of this song and I am so ashamed of myself. Perhaps it’s because of the insane adult voice that kicks in at the end.
Man, even Michael Jackson couldn’t top the schlock in his most sappy-I-love-the-children mode.
American retailers, or at least 99% of them, don’t give a crap about the meaning of Christmas, the origins of it, what religion anyone is, or what offends people other than how it affects their bottom line. They don’t choose the music because it is their own personal taste. They choose it because their marketing survey said it makes the most people buy the most stuff. If blasting Snoop Doggy Dogg made people go out and buy buy buy they would do it.
What do we expect from places that play elevator muzak or blast the latest safe-but-trendy teen hit of the minute the other 10 months of the year? That suddenly they will get inspired to play critically acclaimed and guaranteed-to-offend-no-one music (does that exist?)
Most Christians I know hate the commercialism and bad hyper winter holiday music as much as, or more than anyone. We might as well call it National Retail Holiday and be done with it. Finding anyone that says “I love mall holiday shopping! Especially the repetitive music, because it refers to my personal religion!” is difficult.
Playing “Holiday” music brings criticism, trying to play music from all religions brings criticism (there will always be one left out), playing religious or “Jesus” music brings criticism, not playing it brings criticism. The retailers are pandering to the majority because they can’t afford not to, as others have pointed out, these 2 months bring in most of their profit for the year.
I personally am Christian and I am growing more resentful of the Retail Holiday as well. I am trying to find a meaningful way to raise my son to celebrate the holiday without it becoming a gift grab. It really seems to me that the whole original spirit of Christmas is getting lost.
Just for fun and horror, I will share in the hatred of the Retail Holiday with this story:
A few years ago, just out of college, I worked in a jewelry store in a newly opened mall over the holidays. The store was in the “X” shaped center and open on 2 sides to the mall. Santa and his elves were situated right outside our store, so all day I got to hear screaming tired children wait in line. But there must be a way to entertain them while they wait! So the mall put up animatronic elves that danced and talked in nasal, high-pitched voices and sang a song every time a little tyke pushed the button. This meant I got to hear this song roughly 4,327 times per day:
:harmonica note:
A little work here, and a little work there.
Making lots of toys for kids everywhere.
We work in the morning 'till the day is done.
Then we all go home, and we have a little fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn.
Having listened to the elves sing this song, and only this song for 2 months, I now know what true Christmas Music Hell is like and so nothing can really bother me now.
I agree with Ensign Edison and Ms Robyn.
I can’t say that I know how that feels but can imagine how it would feel, especially to children.
No one is saying to stop celebrating, but at least acknowledge what it must be like for those that don’t celebrate.
And for the spreadsheet I’m a semi-practicing Episcopalian and according to Eddie Izzard that’s sorta Christian.
"“Today’s sermon is…ah…about this magazine I found on a
seat in the subway!”
“Oh God, we thank you for our hairdos”…
I follow MsRobyn’s and C K Dexter Haven’s arguments here. I hate a lot of the music, but for aesthetic reasons. They’re not a reminder of my status as a minority in this country, but I am well aware of what that feels like… it sucks. Like when I watch a TV show that’s in New York, or Chicago, and every character is White. Or when I see the picture of a large law firm and I notice that none of the partners are female or of color. Not intentionally having a go at me, but it irks me.
I do hate the overly WASP-y, middle-class variant of Christmas that is rammed down our throats this time of year. If it irks me as someone who has some agreement with these beliefs, I can imagine for anyone who is of another faith being completely sick during the season.
I grew up in an extremely white, ultra-conservative town in S.E. Wisconsin in the mid-60’s. And while we weren’t Jewish, my family had the only kids in school that did not observe Christmas.
(this story STILL seems to piss somebody off, even to this day):
My siblings and I took great, GREAT pleasure in enlightening other kids that there was no Santa. We did a good job for our age in providing detail. I once had every kid in my first grade class crying at recess. 8 years later my sister beat that record by having 3 classrooms of kindergarteners bawling at a christmas party in the gymnasium.
I would mortgage my house for a copy of a video showing the confrence the principal & teachers had with my folks over this. While my Mother would tell us at home that we needed to keep our mouth shut about such things, my Dad would go to the school and stare them in the eye and demanded to know why they wanted to punish his kid for telling the truth.
My old man had a grudge against the school because in 1965 they tried to “cure” me of my left handedness!:mad:
Though I still don’t observe Christmas, I realize how mean it was to do that as a kid.
But I don’t regret any of it!! Hey, I was 6 years old! Fucking sue me!!!
That’s cool. No offense was intended, so I hope none was taken. I was probably mis-remembering because most of the “Hippies” I hang out with are pagan. Like I said, I don’t keep a spreadsheet of Doper’s religions. I do have a mental list of my fellow pagans (there aren’t too many of us, of course!), but now I’ll remember you’re not on it. 
My point was simply that there are plenty of Christians who hate the pervasive Christmas music, and plenty non-Christians who aren’t bothered by it, so to divide sides on religion doesn’t make sense. Sure, it’s their religion, but lots of non-Christian shop owners play the music they think will get people buying.
Me, I avoid most of it by making most of my gifts and doing my shopping online, so I actually enjoy it for the three hours a year that I’m in stores. I’m sure if I worked retail or spent more time shopping, I’d want to stick an icepick through my skull by the end of November.
Happy Scientist Day!
I had heard of that song for years but never actually listened to it. My god, it is far worse than I ever imagined. I must now listen to the catchiest mp3 on my computer to bleach it out of my brain.
Not at all!
I think that the Christmas music we hear today on radio or tv is directed mostly at children. Especially the commercials.
I remember when I was a kid Christmas was a very special time of the year. Tree, (live) advent calendar, the works. When I hear Christmas music it reminds me of this. I didn’t pay much attention to the religious aspect then or now. Just the melodies, the harmonies. Remember that kids don’t give much of a shit about religion, just the presents that are coming!
'Course I did have to go to midnight services, which I hated. 
The one saving grace of that clip is the hideous audio quality. Just imagine hearing it clearly. :eek: