Published Dec 20, 2004
With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call, it’s the hap-happiest season of all! Yes, that’s right, there’s holiday music blaring from the speakers of all of the stores and malls out there and I love it. I wish July could be like this.
I realize this is an unpopular position to take, but, darn it, I think that holiday music is one of the very best things in life. What else is so happy, so full of hope, so expectant of a wonderful future? What else is so generically nostalgic, so reminiscent of youth?
At this very moment, they’re playing “O Christmas Tree” (or Maryland, My Maryland) on Monday Night Football. I’m beaming.
I think my love for holiday music started in elementary school. I’m an awful singer, but, in the annual Christmas Sing, I could belt it out and have my complete inability to hit any note at all masked by the golden-throated youngsters by my side. Who wouldn’t like an opportunity to, for once, sing sing sing?
Then, as I grew older, my rebellious instincts grew. I liked being different, dammit, and I still do. And, since everybody hates Christmas songs, I grew to love them. Yes, my passion for “The Little Drummer Boy” is a way of acting out against authority. And, so long as you and people like you — Communists all — keep hating holiday songs, I’ll keep loving them.