EDITORIAL- Santa, baby, send new music this Christmas

‘Tis the season

Before we stuffed ourselves with turkey last Thursday, it was gearing up…. ‘Tis the season

Before we stuffed ourselves with turkey last Thursday, it was gearing up. And now, with the last major holiday out of the way, Christmas season is here with all its accompanying joys — retail extravaganzas, requisite holiday movies and, of course, bad Christmas music blaring on every radio station and in every store from now until January.

If it’s not “Jingle Bell Rock,” it’s “Silver Bells” or Celine Dion’s inexplicable cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” which gives us yet another reason to hate Canada.

But lest you, gentle readers, think we are the scroogiest of scrooges, there are songs that don’t get a “bah, humbug” rating, though none of them are on Jessica Simpson’s new Christmas album. Classics like Nat King Cole’s version of “The Christmas Song” or Frank Sinatra’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or, hell, even Handel’s “Messiah” are standards for a reason.

They’re not cutesy, they’re sung (or performed) well, and they have yet to throw anyone into a tongue-lolling seizure. As much as we love Eartha Kitt, that can’t be said for the 20th replay of “Santa Baby.”

As we enter December, radio stations, choral directors and anyone else choosing music shouldn’t forget that there are other holidays besides Christmas. Playing one non-Christmas song — “Dreidel Song,” we’re looking in your direction — doesn’t constitute diversity; nor does giving lip service to Kwanzaa or tokenizing any culture that has a winter holiday for that matter.

It’s been quite awhile since Hanukkah, a couple thousand years by our count, and there is better music than a song about a spinning top, which, while a quality children’s game, doesn’t even touch on what the holiday’s about.

Nor, for that matter, does most Christmas music address the holiday. While Christmas has been increasingly secularized by some, it is a religious holiday. To non-Christians, there isn’t much difference between being bombarded with “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” and “O Holy Night,” except that the latter isn’t irritating.

And just say “no” to techno remixes of Christmas standards. No respectable DJ would produce anything that puts beats behind “Little Drummer Boy” or scratch “Hark! The H-h-herald Angels Sing.”

By the time we get to Dec. 25, Christmas music, even for the truly devout, is no longer special. It’s just the oh-so-irritating soundtrack to the shopping frenzy that is December. So, to all the people who decide play-lists, hold those Christmas songs until the day itself or, if you can’t bear to wait, put on Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s weirder-than-spiders-from-Mars duet of “Little Drummer Boy.” Now that’s in the spirit of the season.