It's beginning to feel a lot like time to hit the iPod...

I realize that most people would have me drawn and quartered for this, but here's the thing.

I hate Christmas music.

It's not that I hate Christmas. Although I do feel bad for religious Christians who have had Hallmark destroy what was once an actual religious holiday, I'm really ambivalent about the holiday.

I like the lights.

Well, the white and red ones.

The rainbow colored ones, however...sorry. Gaudy.

But the red lights and the white lights, very pretty.

I like the giving nature of the season, although I wonder why the other 11 months don't matter.

I even like It's a Wonderful Life, although I don't know why Jimmy Stewart doesn't learn his lesson after seeing what his life is like without him every single year.

But the music, the fucking music, drives me batty.

It's not that I'm Jewish. I mean, my mother's Jewish and she can't get enough of the Christmas music. In fact, if I go home for the holidays, it's more likely that I'll hear the music in our Jewish home than anywhere else.

And it's obviously not that I'm a Scrooge. Like I said before, I kind of like the season.

So, today, I started thinking about why I have this viseral reaction to Christmas music and this is what I came up with. It's The Gap's fault.

When I was in high school, I worked for The Gap for two years. That annoying kid who would welcome you to the store and immediately address your needs or remember the last time you were there and what you bought, yeah, that was me. One of the side benefits of a disturbingly good memory. The reason you got "greeted" wasn't just because the company (that's what we called it, "the company" -- very 1984, I know) wanted you to feel comfortable in the store, it was because the likelihood of a properly greeted shop lifter continuing to shop lift was exponentially smaller. At least according to "The Company."

It was a good job and, frankly, I still own clothes I bought while I worked for the company. The discount was wicked good. To this day, I still feel bad paying full price for anything in the store.

However, during "Holiday"---which is what The Company calls it---everyone's schedule increased. I worked an ungodly number of hours then. And the whole time, the whole fucking time, that stupid ass Christmas music tape would blast through the speaker system over and over and over.

Nothing, and I mean nothing can ruin you forever for Christmas music than hearing it every damn day, all day, for over a month.

No one was happier for the 26th.