The Surgeon General has advised those indulging in the Christmas spirit to do so in moderation. If you are attending a Christmas party, be sure to appoint a Designated Scrooge — someone to remain less merry than everyone else, stay away from mistletoe, and at all costs avoid trolling the ancient yuletide carol.
The Surgeon General’s point is that it is possible to have too much of a good thing, like the time I drank a half-gallon of egg nog in one sitting and subsequently was able to hear colors. I learned my lesson, and now I limit myself to one cup of nog per week, and no nog at all outside the month of December, and no nog-drinking when I’m alone or to escape my problems. I don’t know what nog is made of, but the way it oozes down your throat, I suspect there’s flannel in it.
The Surgeon General has also issued this advisory for those listening to Christmas music: Take it easy, Bobtail. For example, let us discuss KOSY 106.5. This radio station normally plays “easy listening favorites” — i.e., songs you don’t like but lack the energy to hate — but since Thanksgiving, KOSY has been playing nothing but Christmas music, 24 hours a day, at least seven days a week.
At first it filled me with so much Christmas cheer that it would have made Charles Dickens himself vomit in his hat. Then it dawned on me that, just like every other station, KOSY was playing the same songs over and over again. You’d think that with 50 years’ worth of Christmas recordings available, with no restrictions on genre, they’d be able to avoid playing Barbra Streisand’s on-crack version of “Jingle Bells” thrice daily, much less that nightmarish “Little St. Nick” by the Beach Boys.
Besides, playing contemporary Christmas music is really just an experiment to see who can screw up a Christmas carol the most. Maybe a pop diva like Mariah Carey or Vanessa Williams will take a simple melody like “Silent Night” and turn it into one of those awful things where each note is replaced with seven different notes, so we can be impressed with how “well” they sing. Or maybe someone will convert “The First Noel” from 3/4 to 4/4 time and make it more of a march. Why? Because they can!
I can say I have stood at the precipice of hell because I have heard Rosie O’Donnell and “Sesame Street’s” Elmo sing “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (If what you hear is a brass-voiced Gorgon dueting with a shrill sock puppet, then yes, we are hearing the same thing.)
And so I began to hate Christmas music. It began to make my stomach hurt, like the time I drank a half-gallon of egg nog in one sitting and subsequently … did I already tell you that story? Fine. Then it made my stomach hurt like the time I got punched in the stomach.
Eventually, I realized KOSY probably didn’t expect me to listen to KOSY every single time I got in the car. Normal people, enjoying the Christmas spirit in moderation, would not hear the same songs multiple times, so they wouldn’t be bothered by Karen Carpenter singing “Merry Christmas, Darling” with that voice of hers that always sounded like it had syrup all over it (which, if it had been true, might have saved her).
No, most of us have the sense to take Christmas in doses no larger than we can handle. ‘Tis the season, sure, but remember what the song says: “We need a little Christmas.” A LITTLE Christmas. Not a shload of it.
So be careful this holiday season. Deck the halls, sure, but don’t deck the crap out of them. Watch out, don’t cry, don’t pout, but don’t get obsessive about it. And if you’re going to dash through the snow, for heaven’s sake, don’t don you now your gay apparel. People will make fun of you.