I have a confession to make, and it’s not going to be easy. I’ve carried this burden for many years, and I’m not quite sure how to just bare it for all to see. I’m told confession is cathartic, so here goes: I don’t like Christmas music.
I know. Call me a Scrooge if you must, but it’s not my choice. I think I was born this way.
It’s not that I hate Christmas, family, carolers or even the frenzied shopping season that’s taken the place of a religious holiday. I just don’t like the music.
I wasn’t booted down a slide by Santa. I never shot my eye out. And I was certainly never beat up by Scut Farkus. I don’t know what gene I’m missing almost everyone else seems to possess, but somewhere in the shuffle I missed why any radio station would be so possessed as to play Christmas music from before now until Christmas.
I recently confided this dark secret in a friend who then divulged she too was opposed to Christmas music, so I know I’m not alone, which just makes my condition that much more perplexing.
Curiouser and curiouser still is my track record with Christmas music. I’ve caroled; there are Christmas albums on my iPod. I have even been in countless Christmas programs. Moreover I, like all good Americans, like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “Elf” and countless other Christmas classics. My favorite Christmas movie, however, has to be “A Christmas Story,” and maybe that’s a clue to my disinterest in the seasonal tunes.
If you’ve seen that movie, you know it’s not the average Christmas movie. “A Christmas Story” recounts the tale of a child’s Christmas from the clarity and perhaps cynicism of adulthood. It follows the lovable Ralphie as he tries to navigate all the greed, awkwardness, parental rage and gift disappointment that accompanies family holidays. The film has a surprisingly happy ending, and not just because Ralphie receives “a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.”
The movie has a happy ending because ultimately the average middle-class American family makes the decision to be a family, overlook one another’s glaring shortcomings and go eat Chinese food on Christmas.
But without the countless things that went wrong — the vicious family repartee, the destructive dogs from next door, the evil and stupid bully — the final scenes of the film would be far less poignant.
So, I guess I wouldn’t hate Christmas music if I wasn’t inundated with it 24/7. I just feel like it misses the point. What I find amazing about Christmas is not the Norman Rockwell picture-perfect image of opening presents on Christmas.
What I find amazing about Christmas is all the stuff that happens before and after that picture — all the squabbles, difficulties and frustrations that come with making a family work. What blows me away is the fact that, year after year, despite all odds, families all across the world manage to come together under heartwarming circumstances and give each other the purity of their goodwill.
If I ever hear that in a Christmas song perhaps I’ll change my views.
Nate Rushing is a UF political science student. His column appears every Thursday.
