O O Ø O O O O
Another Christmas Grouse
A desperate plea for some different holiday music.
Who listens to Christmas carols? Does anyone—aside from elementary school kids—enjoy them?
I know my mother, who doesn’t generally go too far out of her way to listen to any specific music, likes to put Christmas music on the stereo when people are over for the holidays. Recognizable, nostalgic stuff with bells in it. (Jethro Tull’s Christmas Song doesn’t cut it, but I can usually get some distance out of the Pogues’ and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York.) I can make some allowance for nostalgia, so I don’t mind suffering through a few hours of that small subset of seasonal crap. And that’s usually all it takes before someone, quite possibly my father, snaps and puts on something decent, like Dougie MacLean, or more likely, The Chieftains. Fine.
But why would anyone believe the entire population wants to hear the same dozen songs (Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Little Drummer Boy, We Three Kings, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, Do You Hear What I Hear?, Joy To The World, O Little Town Of Bethlehem) in their infinite rearrangements, pausing only for commercial messages, in a continuous loop from November 14 through “Boxing Week” all the way to January first? Malls, restaurants, street corners, even the freakin’ can at Kev’s place of employment, have all been zoned as carol-approved.
I know what happened. Some daytimer junkie from the do-lunch crowd commissioned a retail survey to determine whether people’s consumer behaviour changed when music was piped into the shopping environment. The discovery was that music greatly influenced consumer spending (surprise!), depending on tempo. Certain ambient music and classical pieces had the supposed effect of calming people, and slowing down their browsing and buying process. This could be desirable in certain retail situations where the amount spent coincides with the time committed at any given location. Car dealerships, for instance.
Upbeat music had the effect of moving people through the store more quickly. (I’m not making this up, by the way. I would quote you a source, but I lost my copy of Retail Marketing when my crawlspace flooded. I took it as a sign from God.) The upshot is, if the music is faster (within limits) you will move through a store more quickly.
Under normal circumstances, this may not correlate to increased sales, but during the Christmas Buying Season, many who would otherwise be casual browsers (Who shops for pleasure? Freaks!) are more likely to be on search-and-destroy buying missions:
- Does it match my price range?
- Is it one of those otherwise-indescribable gift objects?
- Does it come in blue?
Bing bing bing! Buy!
The reasoning must then be that if you play upbeat music that people actively hate, then customers will be zipping past the cash register at a pace somewhat quicker than a trot. Christmas carols in malls are all about increasing the speed and level of consumption. Why then, would I ever want to hear them under any other circumstances? Perhaps this is not the original intent of modern Christmas carols. But only perhaps. Today, they just serve to wind people up into the frenetic pace of The Season. No thank you.
Okay, it’s the holiday season, so I should be charitable. If I can disassociate the carols from the drive-to-consume, what do we have?
We have an extremely abbreviated playlist, served up in pervasive pseudo-random variations. Why would I constrict my musical palette in this fashion? If I wanted to hear the same thing repeated by different musicians, over and over, I would simply tune in to any Top-40 radio station. Even diversionary tracks, such as Six White Boomers and The Huron Christmas Carol are only good for one spin around the turntable before they become old, and have to be retired for another year.
Come alive, people! Be festive without the usual machinations of an antiquated consumption-driven, pseudo-Christian soundtrack. If you have reasons for listening to certain music for the majority of the year, surely those reasons apply doubly as the season runs down. Turn off the damn carols, and play something meaningful.
Bony M and Blue Christmas excepted, of course.
Evan Spence
Tuesday, December 24,
2002
PD DLXXIX