the bastard strikes again.

[kaigou]

Yesterday when I was at the market, I realized I'd forgotten the single most important reason to NEVER LEAVE THE FREAKING HOUSE (at least for the month of December): the goddamn christmas songs everywhere.

Okay, some songs aren't entirely christmas songs, but they fit the mood, like in the aisles at the locally-owned (since 1897! it trumpets) hardware store and hearing Billie Holiday singing I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm. I could do without ever hearing The Little Drummer Boy ever again for the rest of my life (if only I could be so lucky) and no I don't care who covered it, I still hate that damn song. Most hymns I can let go in one ear and out the other, although I do find it somewhat disturbing, to this day, that Little Town of Bethlehem is in a minor key with some pretty depressing modulations in there; even as a child I had the impression that the song was saying the entire event was going to go south and fast, possibly with multiple deaths and some foreboding hints at a sequel.

So I'm gritting my teeth while I'm searching for the sweet potato chips CP likes, and doing a passable version of keeping my internal conversation loud enough to drown out the worst of the auditory pap -- until I get to the check-out counter. The girl is ringing me up, and I'm just standing there, card in hand waiting for my turn in the dance, when I realize the song playing overhead and wishing I had the ability to throw a curse back through time to whomever though such unadulterated tripe would make for a great holiday song, and then suddenly -- for what might even be the first time ever -- I don't listen to what the song means. I just listen to what it says.

I ask the clerk, do you hear that?

Clerk: what?
Me: the song. The song that's playing.
Clerk: Uhm. Yeah. *confused but pleasant* What about it?
Me: the words. What they're actually saying *points to ceiling-speakers*
Song: Where nothing ever grows / No rain nor rivers flow / Do they know it's Christmastime at all?
Clerk: Uhm.
Me: My god, that is the most freaking xenocentric, ego-freaking-tistical, culturally-biased goddamn line and I've been hearing this song for how many years now and I only just realized it? Who wrote this crap!?
Clerk: *stops ringing stuff up, totally distracted* I think it was a bunch of people.
Me: A bunch of freaking morons, you mean. Come on! *points to ceiling-speakers, listens to refrain* So basically the message is that everyone's miserable but if they just knew it's Christmas that they'd be happy, or something?
Clerk: It's supposed to be a christmas song.
Me: Yeah, but we're assuming the people they're singing about actually care whether or not it's christmas. If they're not christian, then the answer is probably, gee, not freaking much.
Clerk: *not even trying to keep track of ringing stuff up*
Me: Okay, honestly, Chunyun is way better.
Clerk: *stares* What? *mumbles* I don't know what that is...
Me: Chunyun! *manages to keep straight face* No way! Chunyun! What kind of heathen are you?
Clerk: Uhm.
Me: Four out of every five persons on this entire planet celebrate Chunyun! It's the biggest holiday! It's when you're with loved ones, celebrating, giving gifts, spending time together after not seeing them--
Clerk: *tries to smile* Uhm, it's Christmas?
Me: *cracks* Actually, it's New Year's. Chinese New Year's. But man, see, when January 18th or whatever rolls around, you could be happy but you'll be miserable because you don't even realize it's Chunyun! You'll be lucky to make it through the night alive, you'll be wretched and pathetic, but noooo, if only you knew it's Chunyun!
Hispanic guy behind me in line: February 14th.
Me: Hunh?
Clerk: Valentine's Day?
Guy: Chinese New Year's. It's February 14th.
Me: Whoops. Okay! Miserable on Valentine's day, how's that for irony.
Clerk: How do you know when New Year's is?
Guy: Because my wife is Chinese... *grin* And we always celebrate Chunyun.
Me: AHAH. I rest my case.

I still hate that song, but at least I feel better now that I have a rant practiced and ready for smoother repetition the next time I have to hear it while in line. Or maybe this year I'll finally wise up and have my iPod with me, with headphones, and just tune out the entire listening experience. Who knows what else might set me off...

Comments

[kaigou]

It's more like Advent, as someone else mentioned -- from what I've gathered via mild research, it's a generalized period of time surrounding the new year, during which there's a massive increase in travel because everyone is going home to visit. The best english analogue is probably what the western world just calls "the winter holidays" -- that rough period of time from just before hanukah and ending somewhere in the week of post-xmas to new years. The concept of a "new year" that starts mid-winter seems to be close to universal; it's just that in the western world, our major religious winter holidays are spread out among several religions whose holidays don't all converge on a single point. That means our travelling is increased but not compressed, yet at the same time are pretty static, calendar-wise, since xmas itself has a specific date so most official-holiday calendars rotate around that. Asian New Year's uses a different calendar system, obviously, so the migration patterns for that are going to shift based on the specific year, much like any increase in travel for folks going home for Passover would change by the year -- but as others have pointed out, it's not really a specific event in and of itself, so much as an umbrella term for a whole host of potential/included events.

The bottom line, though, is that it's something that a massive, massive number of people participate in and are aware of and consider an important annual event -- and yet the fact that we're pretty ignorant of it in the US doesn't diminish their experience, but neither does it render us lonely and miserable to be ignorant, either. That's what gets me about the stupid song, that unlike most xmas songs -- which revolve around the holiday itself (religiously or otherwise) and one's enjoyment of it (or lack thereof, eg I'll be home for christmas if only in my dreams) -- this particular song's message is "if only they weren't ignorant of christmas, they'd see everything as wonderful, like we do!" kind of schlock.

That kind of xenocentric arrogance sets my teeth on edge.

[jetsam]

I interpreted the song as them being more lacking in the trappings of Christmas that we take for granted, since I believe the people mentioned in the song are probably Christian, but I guess you could see it that way.

[kaigou]

since I believe the people mentioned in the song are probably Christian

As has been discussed elsewhere, the song was written for the Ethiopian famine, and yes, they're predominantly (almost overwhelmingly) Christian -- but for some reason I've been under the long-held impression that the song was for South Africa or possibly a Saharan country, possibly because I also don't equate Ethiopia -- the land where the Nile originates -- as a land without any rivers or water.

Listening to the lyrics, and then looking them up, it's worse than just the trappings. It's actually saying that what we hear/see is wonderful because we know it's Christmas. It doesn't say it makes things better; in fact, it kind of begs the question that if we didn't know it's xmas, either, would we see all this bad stuff around us as genuinely bad, as well? It's not like you can cram a whole lot into a song, but you can choose your words more carefully; the line about how what xmas-celebrators see as a beautiful church bell ringing is, to those ignorant of xmas, a death knell. (Which in turn raises some rather ironic twists about how so often, xtianity and its traditions have constituted a death knell for many, many people.) When I flip the song around as part of usual deconstruction, it makes no claims that the death knell is not, in fact, a death knell -- only that those celebrating xmas can, by virtue of their belief in a holiday, see that knell as beneficial and positive. That's what I'd call drinking the kool-aid, in a way.

Regardless, if I'm so short-sighted as to have to be back out in the next three weeks -- until the stupid overhead speakers stop broadcasting all of this overplayed tripe -- I suspect my rant will be substantially different, and more focused on the arrogance of writing such lyrics about Ethiopia of all places... but the general sentiment remains: if someone could summarily remove that song from total existence, I'd be all for that. Not sure it'd do much to remove the attitude it's broadcasting, but it's a start.

[jetsam]

Mm, the line 'And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom' is more reminiscent to me of the Wilfred Owen poem that begins 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.' That it isn't that they are interpreting the bells differently, it's that the bells there are ringing death knells rather than in a celebratory way. In which case, the message is to be thankful that you (in a rich country) are living in a safe place.

Different ways of reading it, I suppose.

[fromastudio]

*nod* I pretty much read that line as an allusion to Anthem for Doomed Youth as well, whether consciously or subconsciously.

[kaigou]

Mm, yes -- but also, see my reply below for a post that might explain better why these things amuse me, and why I don't (or can't) just stop at the top-most level.

[fromastudio]

I didn't read the line about the bells as problematic; I'm pretty sure that it's meant to be read as a "we have water, they have tears; we have bells, they have chimes of doom. " It's a situation-contrast; not a contrast of perception, and I don't think (esp. in a set of loosely written lyrics) that it's going to tie-in to the knowledge of Christmas. My feeling is that a lot of people (perhaps majority) are not going to understand the key phrase as pointing a cognitive knowledge of Christmas and calendar dates and significance (it can be read that way, yes, but it it's not) but rather the warm fuzzy feeling of 'experiencing/knowing' as Christmas. Which is where having a few more verbs for 'to know' would help in the English language, yes, but when the language is this imprecise. *shrugs* But even acknowledging this is pretty unflattering to the writer, and even apart from that, there are some really shitty lines in there: "Thank God I am not a Gentile, and not a woman!"

[kaigou]

Superficially, yes.

It might help, to see why I do/think this way, if you know a bit more of how I think -- when you're on my journal-design, look over to the right and scroll down. There's a bunch of links to most-read posts, and the first one is an introduction. That post is my obligatory "what the hell is going on" link that explains the processes I use, pretty much as an innate/autonomic thing.

Easier to send you there than to repeat the entire post here along with definitions of formal deconstructionism, anyway. XD

[fromastudio]

/wry/ I have read the post; it was one of the things I did before friending your journal.

[kaigou]

Heh. Just making sure! I've been lambasted one too many times by well-meaning folks with a modernist bent, or who just don't get why I insist on going so deep "when it's just a show" or whatever... and having written that whole thing, I've learned it's best to make sure it doesn't go to waste. Forestalls, or at least somewhat alleviates, the more common misunderstandings.