I do not especially observe Christmas. I don't have any objection to those who want to observe Christmas as long as they leave me alone.
Christmas was an off-and-on happy occasion in my family. Some years it was okay, and some years it was not so okay.
Christmas music gives me the creeps. I can deal with Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," and other stuff in that vein, but that's about it.
And the creepiest music of all is the stuff that I recall from my childhood: this or that over-the-hill big band vocalist backed by the Robert Shaw Chorale, anything by Burl Ives and various stinky 'hep cat' renditions of "Jingle Bells" -- "Oh, how wild it is to swing in that crazy one-horse sleigh... yeah!!"
"Greensleeves" and "Silent Night" make me suicidal. I asked my dad a few years before he died if he had any idea why "Silent Night" would have that affect on me. The color drained from his face. He said that maybe something had happened to me in my childhood, perhaps, that might have possibly maybe affected me subconsciously, perhaps possibly. In other words, some godawful something occurred during one of my parents' drunken yuletide binges while "Silent Night" was on the record player or TV set, which I have blocked from all but my deepest subconscious memory. Dad knew what it was, but he wasn't about to tell me.
Anyway, Christmas music pretty much bums me out.
Which brings me to the present. I don't do a lot of Christmas shopping, since I have no family for which to buy stuff. But I still have to do my regular soap-toothpaste-and-toilet-paper shopping, and I hate listening to crappy 50s/60s era Christmas music in stores. I mean I hate it.
Today I was in a store playing that stuff and it made me mauseated... I mean literally queasy. It's not the first time in the past few years I've had that physical reaction.
I don't know what to do about it. I can't completely shut myself off until after New Year's Day. But I would certainly like to.
No comments:
Post a Comment