On this mild, sunny weekday I was casually browsing around a well known department store on Edinburgh’s Princes Street when I heard the dreaded refrain: ‘And so this is Christmas, and what have you done….’
My heart sank. It was the 3rd of November and the clocks had barely changed back, yet here we were, about to face eight weeks of Tannoyed agony in high streets and shopping malls as the crackly old CDs of Christmas standards droned into the nations consciousness yet again.
John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over); Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day; Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody; Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas. Out they trot on an endless, agonising loop – hapless shoppers subjected to the nasal whines of Lennon and chainsaw screech of Noddy Holder wherever they go. And that’s only the classics from the 1970s. After a decent break the 80s decided to take up the seasonal mantle too – so added to the rota we also got Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry and of course Cliff’s dreaded Mistletoe and Wine.
Somewhere along the line, and no doubt after a heated Papal Conclave, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas was allowed to crash the party as well, standing out like a syrupy, orchestrated sore thumb amid the 70s Glam Rock tat. I think this radical move happened about 20 years ago and the status quo of the elite line up has been preserved ever since, rendered even more intractable by Simon Cowell’s corporate stranglehold of the Christmas charts in recent times.
Between them, these seven songs have become a Groundhog Day of seasonal terror, poisoning our televisions, radios, and shopping centres for ever-longer periods as everyone pretends that Christmas starts at the beginning of Autumn. They have become the tiresome guest at the party who stays so long he eventually becomes part of the family. A dubious British tradition that never changes, never evolves, as if Christmas music of any sort, Bing apart, never existed before or beyond the 70s and 80s. Pushing your way harassed and tired through the crowds you can’t even dismiss it as background music as the voices of John, Roy and Noddy inparticular are not phonetically designed for tranquil, airport-style atmospherics. Noddy’s ‘Its CHRISTMASSSSSSSS!’ rips through the skull like the very worst cider-induced hangover and can be seen tormenting many a delicate constitution during the horror of a Christmas Saturday.
Has anyone got any idea how awful all this is for anyone old enough to remember these dubious delights first time around? I can recall enjoying them as a jolly, fast-food fad back in the age of Fashion Hell and three-day weeks pushing on for 40 years ago, but did anybody really think that they were here to stay, that our Christmases would be blighted by their ubiquitous presence for evermore?
I can at least switch channels when the first dreaded strains appear on my radio or television, but I have no control over what I’m subjected to on the high street. So I’m issuing a heartfelt plea to store managers and shopping mall DJs everywhere. Please stop it!!! Please find something else to play!! If you can’t do for the punters do it for yourselves and your own staff, who have to stand their inflicted by this torture hour after hour, day after day! There are centuries worth of seasonal music out there for you to pick and choose from if you just give it a minutes thought. So please, please, please - go and find some of it. Surprise yourselves, surprise us and give us all a break!
