Christmas is a time of giving (the finger to motorists who cut you off or steal that parking space from you, fuckwads), sharing (all kinds of illnesses with family you don't care to see the rest of the year, but are forced to pretend to like for a few days in order to get presents), and food (other than tacos, which in my mind, can barely be considered food, so much as the gift of life itself, all wrapped up in a crunchy shell). But what most people don't realize is that Christmas is also a season of loud, annoying music. Yes, I'm talking about Christmas Carols. The bane of many of our existences for the past month, and for a few more days yet to come. Every year, the same hundred or so songs get played on every PA, in every store, everywhere, for a full month. Look, giving birth only lasts a few hours. So why should I have to suffer through Crosby for 70 of them? Yes, if I wanted a White Fucking Christmas, I'd have moved up to Alaska. But instead I came to Florida, where they haven't seen snow stick since '77. And who the fuck cares about a radioactive reindeer and his compatriot, Sir Frosty the Fucking Creepy Animated Pile Of Snow. Geezus fucking christ, people. Even five year olds know these songs. Is this some kind of brainwashing, to make sure these godawful pieces of crap stick in our heads yearround, so that are brains don't have the room to focus on important things like homelessness, starvation, third world countries, or our own fucked up governing bodies? I mean, at the very least, why not play some new carols? Every punk/pop band has at least one Christmas oriented song, and I'm fairly certain that there are holiday songs being bandied about by other musicians as well (though I own less of other genres of CD's, so I can't be sure). Why the hell don't more of these get played. Because the only Chestnuts I want to hear roasting would be Nat King Cole's in the deepest bowels of hell.



Happy Holidays, Cheerful Chanukah, Krazy Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas, and all those other fucked up holiday greetings to each and every one of you.