"Have a holly, jolly Christmas"...

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Now I know there must be someone out there who loves Christmas music. How do I know this? Because it seems that every radio station in the country has decided to play Christmas music and only Christmas music. It’s not like I’m a Scrooge or a Grinch. I don’t mind the occasional holiday song or two. But come on, hours and hours on end? And this really became a problem when I ended up on a 7 hour road trip in a vehicle without a CD player. There we were with no option but to listen to the radio or each other. We didn't know each other well enough to fill the void. Thus, we ended up being so desperate even country or rap music would’ve been better than another version of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. Or ‘White Christmas’. Or ‘Rudolf the red nosed reindeer’. Or ‘Silver bells’. Or whatever other song we heard. However, we didn’t have any luck. It seemed every station had gone to the dark side. Over and over again, some DJ would proudly announce, “We’re the home for your holiday favorites until … when we’ll be back to playing our regular mix of …” Great, just great. I needed music and I needed it right then. Not next week or next month (which in this case was kinda the same thing). It was so bad, we would turn the dial and hear the same song being played on several stations at the same time. It was maddening. I wanted to start shooting radios or radio towers. And let me tell you, based on some of the versions of ‘Feliz navidad’ we heard, these stations were really scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find enough songs to fill all this air time. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard some of the old standards shrieked at you in falsetto by some has-been rockstar. So next year, I think I’m going to call my local radio station and volunteer to be a DJ for Christmas week. I’ll play a nice mix of a dash of Christmas/holiday music with a lot of great normal stuff. After all, it’s like making a cake – you’ve got to get the recipe just right or it just falls flat. So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. Thank you for another wonderful year and for reading my rants. I’m going to go listen to my CDs now, some classic rock from the 80’s – pretend it’s not Christmas Eve for a few hours. Because if I hear one more carol… well, I can’t say what I'll do, it might get me arrested.

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