X-Mas music

I work a good deal of the day in a refrigerator. A refrigerator that has music piped in.

It obviously isn't music of our choice, as such a thing would probably have the kitchen staff at each other's throats the moment someone demanded conceptual jazz.

No, the music we hear has the typical, "Relax-don't-steal" kind of mentality to it. Easy listening (surely someone's pointed out that contradiction) stuff by artists you've never heard of but remain familiar.

And at this time of the year, it's Christmas music time.

I should qualify this by saying I grew up in a church choir.

What time is it?

(Fortissimo) Game time!

I like Christmas music. Or at least the traditional hymns that you can imagine coming out of someone in a Dickens-era costume.

That being said, the vast majority of modern Christmas music would have made the baby Jesus have second thoughts about the whole saving-of-mankind mission.

I speak, in general, of the two main types of recent Christmas music: Chistmas is cool, dude, and My boyfriend just left me and I'm so lonely that the pumpkin pie will taste a bit off this year.

Christmas is cool, dude, had it's highlight with Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song." It should have ended there. Instead, we have 150 versions of "The Christmas Song" and 1,500 songs that talk about how great Nat King Cole was whenever he sang "The Christmas Song."

"Rockin' around the Christmas Tree," and "Jingle Bell Rock" also get played five times an hour just because they have the words "rock" in them. And, for the first time this year, I've discovered that Bon Jovi wishes it could be Christmas forever, and that Metallica saw mommy kissing Santa Claus. (Yes, I made that one up.)

Meanwhile: The I'm so lonely type especially grates because, while everybody else is having a good time, somebody's gotta dump their depression in the middle of the annual office bacchanalia.

Hence, George Michael sings:

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.

The very next day, we went cruisin' the park.

Or something like that.

And really, the sickest thing I've heard is a song called "Santa Baby", about a woman who seems to have sexual fixation on Mr. Claus. "Hurry down my chimney tonight," she sings. It's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but after you've listened to something 300 times, the tongue has worn through the cheek and is sticking out at you in a sick raspberry.

I don't have some conclusion here, just complaining.