Head-to-Head: You Smell like Beef and Cheese, Not Santa

If you live in Bozeman and have visited Walmart or Costco at least once in the past month, you know that the seasonal sections of both stores have been packed with lights, fake trees, and inflatable snowmen since September. While I frequent both stores, one recent trip has been on my mind. Two weeks ago on my weekly Sunday morning Costco run, I heard the first Christmas music of the season. Seeing as I drink more eggnog than water in the winter and my biggest goal in life is to have cooler Christmas lights than Clark W. Griswold, you might believe I was ecstatic to hear the wonderful tune of “Silent Night” as I sampled Polish sausage and frozen egg rolls in the meat department. WRONG! I was frustrated that someone had used their DJ privileges to begin playing Christmas music before November. While early Christmas music can certainly be unsettling to all, there is one group of people who take it way too far: the cotton-headed ninny-mugginses that hate pre-December Christmas music.

Christmas music is to begin immediately at midnight following Halloween. People who choose to play it later in the season neglect this genre by not playing it when seasonally appropriate. People who play it too soon, although well intentioned, only make it easier for the killjoys of the world to stand against pre-Thanksgiving Christmas music. We could talk about the countless studies that have overwhelmingly concluded that Christmas music elevates the average persons’ mood because of its association with happy memories and images. We could also talk about the other studies that concluded that upbeat and uplifting Christmas songs like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” help to elevate mental health just the same as listening to the Awesome Mix from Guardians of the Galaxy.

While there are many other proven reasons that extending the Christmas music season to the first of November is a good thing, I feel as though providing more scientific evidence to back up my case would just result in me endlessly droning on and you getting bored and reading the #FakeNews with which this piece shares a page. I understand not everybody celebrates Christmas, but there’s still music for everybody this time of year. Our Canadian friends Bob and Doug McKenzie have a rendition of “Twelve Days of Christmas” that would knock your stockings off, and who doesn’t love “Dreydl Dreydl Dreydl”!? Anybody who claims to love Christmas music but can’t stand a little bit of Christmas cheer in November smells like beef and cheese and sits on a throne of lies.

With that in mind, I will wrap up my argument with a series of questions. To the nasty grinch who hears sleigh bells and wants to channel their inner Clark Griswold and see how far a human can kick a plastic Santa — why? Why do you hate Christmas music? Why do you hate happiness? Do you actually like to be wrong? Why must you be a cotton-headed ninny-muggins? When you come up with an answer, please do let me know. You can find me most days in the Exponent Office drinking hot chocolate and listening to the “Die Hard” soundtrack.