It’s the middle of December. Everywhere you go, winter coat-swaddled people bustle about, spreading and reaping holiday cheer.  There is Christmas spirit everywhere, carols spewing from the speakers of every store and restaurant. Every radio station switches its normal programming to Christmas songs for the month, and these earworms inhabit the skull of every (snow)man and woman, boy and girl, reindeer and elf.  Isn’t that annoying? Do we not, as willing patrons of the holidays, deserve the right to take a break from the endless monotony of Santa and his reindeer’s jingling bells? Hark, could the herald angels take a break for a few minutes?

Let’s delve into the issues of the songs themselves. Many Christmas songs are merely covers or remixes of original tunes, morphing a benevolent vehicle of good lyrical tidings into a 21st century politically correct Justin Bieber behemoth that one can scarcely connect to Christmas. The converse of this is the corruption of holiday traditions into a song that can entice alternate audiences. Take “Santa, Baby,” by Eartha Kitt, for example:

“Think of all the fun I’ve missed

Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed

Next year I could be also good

If you’ll check off my Christmas list”

How can our society justify the apparent conversion of Santa Claus from kind, jolly, gift-bearing Kris Kringle to an adulterous maniac motivated by breathy females awaiting his emergence from the chimney flue?

Christmas songs are called Christmas songs for a reason. They are not “pre-Halloween songs.” They are not “mid-July songs.”  Christmas songs are meant to be played at Christmas-time. Not before. Not after. The acceptable period of time for carol-listening ranges from Black Friday to New Years’ Day. Even the concept of Black Friday is indicative of our Hallmark society. Walmart has a Halloween section, and on November 1st, it is replaced with candy canes and wreaths. Then, on January 2nd, all of it is shoveled out like yellow snow and replaced with Valentine’s Day decorations.

Every well-known musical artist feels the need to create their own Christmas song. By now, so many Christmas songs exist that one can barely tell the difference between one and the other.  After a while, they all start to sound the same, and I, for one, start to lose whatever holiday spirit is still trapped in my three-sizes-too-small Grinch heart. I look forward every year to pulling out old Christmas tree ornaments and rehashing memories with the people closest to me. But it’s hard to enjoy it as much when Mariah Carey starts to sound like Frank Sinatra.

Christmas is a time of joy and giving and happiness, but the hapless hype and holiday hyperbole created by songs and carols do not, in my opinion, show the true meaning of Christmas. Spend time with someone you love, or do a good deed. You don’t need to sing about it.