Don't it always seems to go that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone...

Early December - the time of year when people start complaining about Christmas music. They grouch in cartoons and comic strips and newspaper columns and in newsgroups and weblogs about the stores playing it. It's fashionably anti-sentimental to hate Christmas music. It's tinny, it's bad, it's played too early, it's played too loud, it's played too much.

It's remarkable, then, what a void the absence of Christmas music makes in the celebration of the holidays. As a formerly-hearing person, seasonal music was the soundtrack of every Christmas of my life, from shopping trips, to the background noise coming out of the old "big as a Buick" stereo unit as we decorated the Christmas tree, to the punctuation of Christmas specials on TV. This year it is notably conspicuous by its absence. Okay, I don' t have to suffer "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas", the misplaced "My Favourite Things" or the distinctly creepy "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". But neither can I enjoy the magic of Vince Guaraldi's score for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or listen to the charming "The Holly and The Ivy" or the crashing chords of "Joy to the World" while I'm wrapping family presents.

People are certainly welcome to bitch and complain about the presence of Christmas music. I think it's nice for them that they don't even have to think of the alternative :)

ronnie