Christmas Music

Not only is it October already, which has to be the result of a vast, overarching conspiracy of some kind bent on making this entire year go by with blazing speed, but the grocery store is playing Christmas carols already. I'm not as curmudgeonly on the topic of Christmas Creep as some people I know, but come on—it's still weeks until Halloween!

Maybe the problem is that other holidays don't have songs. If we had Halloween music, and Thanksgiving music, they could play those instead (and would no doubt start playing them in July, right after the Independence Day carols faded out), but for some reason Christmas is the only major American holiday that really gets addressed in song. Halloween has a couple of novelty songs, but not enough to fill any serious airtime, and I can't think of any songs about Thanksgiving at all (unless that "over the river and through the woods" bit is supposed to be sung then, and no one seems to know more than the first verse).

A failure of the popular imagination, surely. Halloween in various forms has been around for a good long time, more than enough to accumulate a few mournful tunes. And one would think that Thanksgiving, emblatic as it is of the things that made this country what it is today, would have reams of music devoted to its celebration. Nope. Or how about some Election Day songs? There must be something out there that would fit the mood aside from those tedious campaign "theme songs."

Rise to the challenge, people of America! Go forth and create music! By further comparmentalizing the holidays, you will be doing the curmudgeons of Earth a world of good.

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