All I Want for Christmas is to Stop Hearing Christmas Music

Kayla Kost, Photography and Graphics Editor

Christmas is the one time of year that everyone seems to be cheery and bright. There are lights up, glitter everywhere, and that awful music ringing through the air. Yes, awful! The same tune, same lyrics, rewrite after rewrite, gets stuck in your head. With all the cheer it is supposed to bring, Christmas music might just be the most annoying commodity year-round. 

Okay, okay I know what you’re thinking. “But Kayla, what’s the problem with it? It’s catchy, happy, and spreads Christmas spirit.” Now I understand that, but hear me out. What’s the first thing you think of when all a sudden you hear the sleigh bells from Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You?” I know it’s not “Oh hey I love this song!” and if it is, you scare me. It’s probably “Here we go again,” followed by an eye roll. The song is just flat out annoying and it is played constantly! No offense to Mariah, but it’s just too exaggerated–I don’t think all those runs are needed. 

Sure there are some good songs. I’ll give you that, but do you remember that one song? Yeah the one that’s probably playing in your head right now? How many times does that pop in your head on a day-to-day basis because you keep hearing the melody? The songs are catchy, and that’s one of their biggest problems. When a song gets stuck in your head, it’s called ¨Involuntary musical imagery¨ or ¨Earworms,¨ and Christmas music is the pure embodiment of those musical bugs. 

Oh yeah, and since you now have one stuck in your head, have fun with it!

When you think of annoying Christmas songs, which one comes to mind first? “Santa Baby?” “Last Christmas?” Maybe “Santa Claus is Coming to Town?” 

If we were to do an official ranking, the answer to that would be none of them. That’s right. Not a single one can be ranked as the most annoying because they all are equally detestable. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is repetitive, but so is “Last Christmas.” You think they must be the worst, but then you hear “Santa Baby” once and the one, single, solitary ¨Santa Baby¨ line rings throughout your entire brain for weeks. These songs play when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake, whether you’ve been bad or good, and it’s all for Christmas’s sake! 

Here’s some upsetting logic for you. “All I Want For Christmas is You” came out in 1994, which means the song has been playing for 26 years now, every Christmas, multiple times a day. It was in the top 5 songs in 2016 and it played on basically every radio station that has Christmas music. The song runs for 4:03 minutes. If it has been played 10 times a day every day on one radio station for 10 days before Christmas every year since it came out, that’s 10,530 minutes or 175.5 hours of Mariah on one station! And with all that, it still only takes one second of it to drive someone insane. 

Honestly one of the biggest problems with Christmas music is that even when there’s something new, there’s never really anything new. It’s just cover after cover of the same songs. “Last Christmas” originally by Wham! has been covered by over 100 different artists. Is that really necessary? You have the song so why do you need over 100 versions of it? That also means it’s going to be played even more because stations will have to play the Wham! version, the Taylor Swift version, the Ariana Grande version, the Rita Ora version, and the Gwen Stefani version. 

So yeah, there are problems. To fix Christmas music, we need new songs and fewer reruns. Whether you’re out Christmas shopping or just listening to the radio, when December first strikes, guess what you’re going to hear? Echoing through the speakers is all Christmas music 24/7. Sometimes even before December, and for what? Honestly, just play normal music.

Rerun after rerun, hour after hour, turn the music off! Christmas is the time of year to celebrate, but you can’t help but want to bash your head into a wall when you hear ¨Here comes Santa Claus…¨ So what would you say the most annoying commodity year-round is? And another thing: don’t even get me started on the chocolate eggs in April!