I’m still listening to the same Christmas tunes I started listening to in November of last year. Why? Because when I change my iPod to contemporary music, I feel annoyed…even lilting classical selections aren’t working for me right now. The Christmas melodies I’ve enjoyed over the holidays make me feel happy, so why should I stop listening to them, just because the holidays are over?
These aren’t, for the most part, (more) contemporary Christmas songs…George Michael’s “Last Christmas” is in the mix, and so is “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses, but the bulk are the real classics, like Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby”, Burl Ives’s “A Holly Jolly Christmas”, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”, and Gene Autry’s “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”. These songs just evoke that holiday feeling – a feeling so pleasant that it’s a shame that we willfully let it fade after the first of the year.
This year, I won’t be constrained by arbitrarily-determined timeframes for when I can be in the “holiday” mood. I have the ability and the inclination to listen to my favorite holiday tunes whenever I please – even though the radio stations have stopped playing it, I can work around it. I’ll watch my (many) Christmas movies throughout the year, not just in the few weeks leading up to the big holiday. I’ll make eggnog and eat gingerbread, if I so desire.
I’m not shutting Christmas and the positivity that surrounds it back in the box with the ornaments, like I have in the past…it should surround us in its glow throughout the year. At some point, though, I may decide that I want to return to listening to other musical genres, and that’s ok – but that time isn’t now.
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” – Ebenezer Scrooge (from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”)