Christmas | Department of Motor Vehicles | gas station | oil joint

Your Brain On Holiday Music

by Jim Shahin

Image about Shahin Takes Off 12-15-2007-1

YOU KNOW WHAT I like about this time of year? The music.

I don't know about you, but I can't get enough of that canned Christmas music they play at the drugstore. And the supermarket. And the department store. And the pastry shop. And the clothes outlet. And the restaurant. And the gas station. And the changeyour- oil joint. And the Department of Motor Vehicles. And the civic plazas. And the sidewalks. And the trees. And the wilted lawns. And the - sorry, got carried away.

That's how much I love it.
It's the most wonderful time of the year … ding dong.

DOESN'T IT JUST make you want to sing? Or at least go to the mall?

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock
Jingle bells swing and jingle bells ring.

Man, I just can't get enough.

The thing I especially like? The slick, overproduced, ultra-shininess of it. It's the aural equivalent of the sheen of a politician's hair.

What a bright time, it's the right time
To rock the night away.

Particularly wonderful is how cheery the songs are, even as they make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Mix and a-mingle in the jingling feet.

What the gee-golly-whiz are jingling feet? Who knows?! Who cares?! It's fun!

That's the jingle bell,
That's the jingle bell,
That's the jingle bell rock.

You know what else is really great? There are so wonderfully, shiningly, unrelentingly many of them.

You get to hear them so often, they get stuck in your head - like a car stuck in a deep snowbank. No matter how hard you try, you can't dislodge the minivan of Christmastime song out of the snowbank that is your brain.

Not that you'd want to.

Heck, no! It is, as the song says, the most wonderful time of the year.

I've gotten so that I hear myself singing the holiday songs, even though I don't know the words - like when I'm in the car, driving through all the cheerful holiday traffic.

Frosty the snowman
Bada yip za loo ba dee
Frenamin chaboom kada wot bayou
Soona moo cha la binya
Frosty the snowman
Dada yippee kai yo kai yay

"Hey, that was a stop sign, you moron!"

"Sorry! Singin'!"

Sometimes I catch myself humming along to a catchy tune at the mall as I inch my way through the clog of holiday shoppers, all trying to fi nd that perfect gift for that certain someone, who, upon unwrapping the present, will behold the gift-giver with that special look on his or her face, the look that says, "What the …? Did you mean to give this to someone else? I mean, are you kidding me?"

Everybody at the mall seems just a teensy bit tense. But not me. Because I have my cheery seasonal music on.

Mmm mm mmmmm mmmmm mmm …

Recognize it? Of course you do, silly. It's a holly jolly Christmas.

One of my favorite times to have a holiday ditty repeating incessantly, like a ferret inside my skull, is when I am shoveling the walk. For the third time that day. And the snow is still coming down.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Great, huh?

Too bad the new year is right around the corner and all of this will end. Well, next holiday season will be here before you know it.

Till then, remember: It's the most wonderful time of the year.

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