Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love.
When Dire Straits wrote their song “The Bug”, they might have been talking about the act of Christmas shopping. If they were, then they are very strange people, as the lyrics seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas shopping. Why anyone would even suggest this connection is completely beyond me.
Still, Dire Straits always come to mind when I’m Christmas shopping, primarily because every time I hear the same damned repetitive Christmas carols piping through the store speakers, I yell, “Play some Mark Knopfler instead, you twats! I’m sick of this nonsense!”.
Of course, my crazed mid-shopping mall rants generally go unheeded by everyone except the store security guards, who, I’ve discovered, have very little control over the music. The next best thing is to cover the sounds with your own music, but because enormous shoulder-mounted ghetto blasters went out of fashion with enormous shoulder pads (which you would imagine would be worn in tandem with a ghetto blaster, but in fact there was very little crossover), you can’t really drown it out.
My preferred alternative is my own set of vocal chords. And so, when bombarded by the usual yuletide crud, I hum as loudly as I can the song “The Bug” (from Dire Strait’s notably unsuccessful album On Every Street). It usually only takes two people to compete with a department store speaker system, which is problematic given I can never convince anybody to join in.
I am yet to figure out the role of Christmas carols in our society. Even the better ones are terrible, and the worse ones? They’re worse.
There’s the song about kid who has a little tin drum and is so happy about it, but it’s clear he can’t play it because he ends up having to vocalise the noise it would make if he were playing it. Or there’s that one in which the singer gleefully encourages us to “Let it snow”, which, here in the Southern Hemisphere, can only be interpreted as a stance in favour of global warming. Or there’s the one about falling on your knees, which is the sort of painful activity that could really ruin your Christmas. And it’s worth pointing out that the three carols I listen are amongst my “favourites”.
I don’t understand the sort of hive mind thinking that leads to us, as a society, willingly submitting ourselves to songs we would never dream of listening to during what I must refer to as the Sane Months. Exactly what is it about the celebration of that holiest of historical religious moments (ie: the advent of consumerism) that causes us to discard our senses?
“Don’t be silly, Popular Onya Columnist!” you cry. “The rest of the year is filled with garbage! Fifteen minutes on any commercial radio station should prove just that!”
This is a good point, and very well made by you-through-me. Yes, the majority of popular music is rubbish, but I can usually accept that some people enjoy it, and it’s made by people who must surely enjoy it themselves. But, more importantly, it’s played by department stores with the expectation that most of the teens hanging around inside of them really do like it. What I can’t stand is the unspoken acceptance that even though nobody really likes carols, and nobody chooses to listen to them in their own time, we have to play them incessantly throughout December because that’s the Done Thing.
Nowadays we don’t just have to contend with the tinny, white noise renditions of carols in their traditional format; we also get to “enjoy” the unique take that popular singers have. This usually means cramming in three extra notes per syllable, suggesting that Santa’s elves have long since given up their wood carvings in deference to auto-tune machine construction.
Nowhere is safe. Even the public bathrooms have speakers fitted into every wall cavity and toilet roll holder, as if the carolers anticipated the inevitable physical outcome their songs would have. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually felt that hearing what my neighbour is up to in the adjoining stall might be the more pleasant option.
Maybe — just maybe — I’m overreacting. Perhaps there are some people who do enjoy this sort of thing, people for whom even the worst Christmas carol represents a time of year that, despite corniness, fills you with a warm feeling. Who am I to judge these people? I belong to the small subset of nerds who enjoy ridiculously long setups that exist purely in service of a painful pun, and I know the majority of audiences simply don’t like that. Perhaps I’ve just lost the Christmas spirit, and this anti-carol rant is just me coming over all Ebenezer Scrooge.
Even if that’s the case, I still have a few more days until Christmas, and that means more subjection to the carols I loathe. So, rather than complain further and potentially ruin the Christmas spirit of others, I shall keep my grouchiness to myself, and do nothing but attempt to smother the carolling before it reaches my ears. In other words, I shall hum “Bug”.
