Spreading Christmas Cheer

I hate Christmas music, and I really mean that. I am not a scrooge who hates the entire holiday season, but as soon as I hear the opening notes of basically any Christmas tune, I immediately reach for the dial to change the station. This is due to what psychologists would call "Classical Conditioning" and is entirely down to a series of jobs I had while I was in high school and college.

A long time ago in a place very similar to this one, I worked in a store called The Gift Source. It was everything that it's name would have you believe in that it was a source for gifts. This is, of course, assuming that your idea of a "gift" was a wooden duck with a chip in its beak, one of those Troll dolls with ample amounts of pink fuzzy hair, or a musical water globe in which, due to poor manufacturing, the objects inside floated around along with the snow when you shook it up. If this is not your idea of a gift, then you would have been out of luck and the only thing this place would have been the source of is frustration.

I worked there for several years and, in fact, started dating my lovely wife while she and I were busy stocking the shelves with holiday cheer and/or tasteless crap, depending on your particular viewpoint. The store was located in a busy part of the mall and was known for its holiday cheer. There was a giant display window in front and like little elves, every year workers from the corporate office would come and decorate this window with the most amazing displays of christmas cheer you had ever laid eyes on. There would be a giant stuffed Santa Claus sitting on top of a sleigh filled with snow and presents and helpful elves and candy canes and more presents and gumdrops and kittens and whatever else your little heart could desire. Additionally, throughout the store, there would be what we always called "foof" - fluffy, lacy, colorful displays set up to remind you that Christmas was just around the corner! If you have ever been in a Hallmark store that is decorated for Christmas you only have a small inkling of what I am talking about. This place screamed (sometimes literally, depending on what displays we had) "IT IS GODDAMN CHRISTMAS AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!"

And then there was the ubiquitous Christmas music. Sometimes it would be classic songs sung by old crooners like Bing Crosby, and sometimes it would be some bastardized version of Jingle Bells sung by Debbie Gibson. And then there was the Kenny G - sweet Jesus the Kenny G. Nothing can kill a mood faster than having to listen to that smooth-jazz playing, rhythmic breathing, curly haired wanker blow into his saxophone for a few hours. Top all this off with the fact that approximately every 12 to 18 seconds, someone would come in and ask if we had any Precious Moments figurines.

Now, you might be just like the customers and think that with the Gift Source being owned by Enesco, the company that manufactures these big eyed pastel figurines, that we would have a few stashed away somewhere. You, like the customers, would be wrong, only they didn't handle this news nearly as well as you are handling it now. Often there would be angry accusations that we were keeping them for ourselves or that we were idiots for not carrying these stupid porcelain figurines. Each day was a battle and each day we lost because, as they say, the customer is always right. Unless, of course, they irritated me by asking one too many times for me to go in the back and see if we had what they were looking for, whereupon I would go in the back, sit down for a few minutes, and despite an entire case of their desired object sitting in the middle of the stock room floor, I'd return to tell them that there were none of what they were looking for and that I was terribly sorry.

So I hate Christmas Music.

This makes musical choices difficult when it comes time to decorate the tree and put up all of our Christmas knick-knacks. This year we decided to let the kids decide, and Ryan first suggested that we listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas CD which, despite the fact that it is technically Christmas music, doesn't suck as much as the rest. The disc finished up after about an hour and we still had plenty of decorating to go, so Jen posed the question to the boys about what we should listen to next.

Now, the day before I had gone on a little iTunes tear, downloading several old 80's hair metal songs which I planned to use while working out. While we were in the car I played some of these songs for the boys who, being my sons, immediately thought that they were the greatest things ever to come out of a speaker. We must have listeded to "Final Countdown" by Europe about 76 times on the 15 minute car ride back from wherever we were. This was by far the biggest it of the bunch, but "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi and "Rock You Like A Hurricane " by the Scorpions were well recieved as well. After Laurie Berkner and the Wiggles, it is good to see that they have not completely lost the ability to appreciate good music.

Anyway, when the question was posed to the boys, Ryan quickly answerd, "Hair Metal!"

Ethan responded, through his ever present pacifier, "Yeah! Air Ettal!"

I couldn't dissapoint my boys, so we tossed the iPod onto the stereo and the dulcet tones of the Scorpions began rocking us while we put lights on the tree. Eventually all thoughts of Christmas music evaporated (at least from those of us with only one X Chromosome) and the day took on a whole new tone. Ethan jumped around singing "...(mumble, mumble) Final Countdown!" along with Europe, and Ryan danced around and asked, "Dad, is love really a bad name?" All thoughts of Maria, Bing, and Kenny G were eradicated and we just sang along and had a grand old time.

We must have burned through that playlist 3 or 4 times before we finished trimming the tree, and it is now one of my favorite Christmas memories. I think my next job is to explain to the boys that "Dr. Feelgood," and "I Can't Drive 55" are not holiday classics, but like finding out about Santa Claus, this can wait a few years.