PLEASE ADMIRE MY RESTRAINT

Christmas music and I have not always been friends. Lemme ‘splain.

My mother is a musician, and made her living teaching music. Every year in mid-October for the first eighteen years of my life, the Christmas music started. No, not recordings being played.

Worse.

Children. Piano-playing children. All of them plunking out Jolly Old St. Nicholas from October the 15th until just shy of the Christmas holiday. We Wish You A Merry Christmas before we’d even gotten through Halloween. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer served up with your Thanksgiving turkey. Jingle Bells as far as the ear could hear.

It was enough to drive even the most Christmas-loving person to drink. And I wasn’t even old enough to drink yet.

At some point around age twelve, I declared war on Christmas music. I had suffered enough! It wasn’t even as though we were particularly invested in the holiday as a family. We stopped bothering with an actual tree* and decorations by the time I was seven or eight. I was never too bothered about the whole Santa thing--I went along with it at school because it was just what you did, and when I was very small I’m sure we did the whole ‘milk-and-cookies’ bit, but I don’t recall ever having been under the illusion that a fat dude in a red suit actually came down my chimney every year. I was too clever for that. Magic, schmagic, people--I’ve seen up that chimney. Ain’t nobody comin’ down that thing, no way, no how.

Why yes, I was born middle aged, why do you ask?

But I digress. The point I was making was that Christmas music and I were not friends for a very, very long time. I mean, can you blame me?

Of course, it wasn’t as if I could avoid it terribly successfully. I danced. I could escape the carols, but only as far as the ballet studio, where it was Nutcracker** season. At least in that I was a willing participant. The rest of the holiday cheer was foisted upon me in the most unceremonious manner imaginable.

Two notable caveats: choir in high school and, of course, the annual carol singing party hosted by my mother’s BFF from college. Classic carols and anything sung in parts with a decent level of panache got a pass from me because I detested them less than the mainstream garbage.

Any old way, I was a ‘for-real’ grown up before I got over my case of the Humbugs, and living in my first ‘for-real’ apartment with my first ‘for-real’ grown up boyfriend. That was the year the appeal of the holiday season returned to me with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. We bought a tree***. We decorated the front window. We went cuckoo bananapants with presents for each other and our families etc. It was a big to-do, and somewhere in there I magically got over my abhorrence of most Christmas music.

Not all of it. There are still songs that make me switch the radio off.

But that’s not the point. The point is that nearly ten years ago, I decided that I could deal with Christmas music again, and this year, it was a struggle not to switch it on until after Thanksgiving. I think what it really boils down to is the fact that I’ve managed to find my niche vis-á-vis holiday tunes. Give me the Rat Pack and I’m a very happy bunny. There’s a fabulous recording of Bluegrass goddess Alison Krauss and world-renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma performing my personal favorite, the Wexford Carol. And, a couple of years ago when I discovered English folk singer Kate Rusby, I also discovered her Christmas albums. There are five of them as of last week, and they are a delightful compilation of the traditional, the original, and even a few of the less offensive (as far as I’m concerned) contemporaries.

Oh, and the Muppets. Because who doesn’t like the Muppets?

No, really. Hands up if you don’t like the Muppets.

Because I’m going to bonk you on the noggin, that’s why.

In any case, I could spend ages here stuffing my yuletide playlists down your throat, but I shan’t. I will, however, link you to Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days, because it is SO VERY CLEVER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8
 
You’re welcome.




*Once the tree stopped happening, we started designating a houseplant every year. We had a Christmas Houseplant. Merry happy.
**To this day, I start marking choreography at the first three notes of any part of the Nutcracker suite. DAMN YOU, TCHAIKOVSKY!
***Four feet tall, pre-lit, white lights. It’s nine years old now, and it still works.