Christmas Music Compromises - Albums for People who Hate Christmas Music

20 years of retail management have put me off Christmas music.

But everyone else in my family seems to love it.

The Wife starts arranging her playlists and whistling along to old standards around Halloween, and my nieces and in-laws post to Facebook about how excited they are to discover that the local radio stations have switched over to all-holiday programming.

Can you imagine? Listening to radio advertising and Christmas music, nonstop? I guess those radio stations must play that music for somebody. Must be the same people who go shopping for fun. Weirdos!

Like @heymattsokol, I feel that enough is enough with these tunes.

As a retailer, I'd hear the stuff and feel a black hole start gnawing my insides as I imagined what lay ahead: bloated inventories with nowhere to store them; contradictory and unreasonable corporate demands; decorating and re-merchandising; aggressive, desperate parents on the verge of panic, trying to satisfy the demands of their emotionally blackmailing families; 10-day stretches of work without a day off... then 18 hours to rest before setting up the clearance sales and processing weeks of returns from bitter customers itching for a fight. Merry F**king Christmas.

Customer service is the art of eating shit and farting roses. I got to be way too good at it.

I'm grateful that I married a woman compassionate enough to turn off the holiday tunes when I got home from work. And I'm immeasurably grateful that I haven't had to practice that trade for the past couple of holidays.

Now that we both work from home, though, we both share this space for all the hours of the day. So a certain level of Christmas listening is expected.

I could go on for days about why this holiday music is so pernicious: the way it's used to manipulate shoppers into spending money they don't have, the way it preys on our basest sentimentality, the catchy earworm-jingle aspect that just won't leave your head even after the music's stopped - but going on for a single sentence paragraph is enough.

After all, @kaylinart has made some great points about complaining, and I'd rather use my energy to help holiday-phobes and holiday-philes find a way to peacefully co-exist.

Fortunately, there is some decent holiday music out there.

You've just got to look around for it. The stuff we have forced on us in department stores and on radio stations is overplayed because it's familiar, so it's been proven effective for advertising and sales. As an unfortunate consequence, it's hard to imagine an artist contributing anything new to this genre and finding any traction.

But that doesn't mean this music isn't getting made.

Sufjan Stevens: Collected Christmas Albums

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Sufjan Stevens is one of the most productive and creative artists to make music this century, averaging more than an album a year since his debut in 2000. And while he's not by any means a "Christian musician" - his faith infuses his music, rather than being its subject - he has nevertheless produced an astonishing number of holiday themed albums that treat the classics with his unique style, while introducing some entirely new pieces.

Some of it's a little dark, and some of it's damn funny. Who doesn't love a Christmas Unicorn?

You can listen to a five hour collection of his holiday songs here. It may not be the typical catchy stuff that makes you want to go shopping, but it is, for the most part, a genuine and thoughtful take on the meaning, mood, and spirit of the holiday.

Here's his interpretation of "I'll Be Home For Christmas." What I love about this video is the way it plays on the cynical nature of our age. The little girl runs through one dark, horror-inspired scene after another, before emerging into what we all really want in the end: a loving family and a moment of warm togetherness. By itself, the final scene would be saccharine, but the rest of the video establishes its importance.

Squirrel Nut Zippers: Christmas Caravan

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The Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas Caravan is another good standby. This one has been out since 1998, shortly after the band rose briefly to fame on the wings of a GAP commercial and a brief fad for swing music.

The album is full of high energy and simple fun. You might play this one at a party (while I'm not sure you'd do that with Sufjan's) and you can definitely dance to it. And sure, some of the songs border on "catchy," but they don't have the patronizing, over-processed feel of most holiday music. Plus you probably haven't heard them enough to get sick of them yet.

Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Peanuts Christmas

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I'll close with the one classic Christmas album which, for whatever reason, never gets old: the Peanuts Christmas, played by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

I know, I know, this one has been around since 1965. It's been piped through radio stations and department stores just as much as anything else.

Why, then, do these songs elicit such warm feelings of comfort and joy, while the rest of the stuff from that era makes my skin prickle?

Maybe it's the message of the Charlie Brown holiday special, which feels so sincere and anti-commercial it's hard to imagine it ever being produced today. Maybe it's the mellow, soothing improvisations, which can float through the chatter of a Christmas party without demanding attention, yet which still reward the attention of a dedicated listener with substance. Maybe it's just the right level of groovy.

In any case, whenever this album came on in a place I was working, I felt an instant sense of relief and calm, regardless of whatever chaos I was facing down at the time. And I could still put it on when I got home and enjoy it with my family.

How do you feel about Christmas music during the holidays?

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Are you sick of it already? Do you listen to it by choice? And do you have favorite holiday albums that you look forward to?