Do You Hear What I Hear?

When it comes to holidays, I am, in many ways, a traditionalist. I love celebrating Halloween and Christmas, but only in their actual seasons. It disturbs me to see skulls and Jack O'Lanterns in stores on Labor Day; it disturbs me even more to see clerks at Walgreens yanking down the witches and skeletons in favor of elves and reindeer before Halloween has even had a chance to pass.

Yes. I know. I've bitched about this before. And it gets worse every years, to be sure. But now, we have a more recent--and even more disturbing--manifestation of the holiday-ahead-of-its-time: The radio stations that switch to an all-Christmas music format before the trick-or-treat candies have been fully consumed and even most sensible people have not yet bought their Thanksgiving turkeys.

Richard Roeper--whom many people have said I resemble (no, really) and whom more than a few friends have suggested isn't as good a writer as I am (even though he gets the bigs bucks and has millions of readers while I have, like, five)Ñrecently wrote a column on this very subject, openly wondering who the hell listens to Christmas music on the radio in the first week of November. Somebody must be, since the ratings for the stations involved invariably go up after the switch and come down again after they resume "regular" programming.

He has a point. I don't know anyone, sane or otherwise, who listens to Christmas music on the radio this early, yet you can hear the accursed stations playing in stores and cafes all over the city and probably all over the country, assuming there are similarly addled program directors in other major cities as well.

Yet I must confess--and I take no pride in the confession--that I've already started to listen to my holiday CDs at home.

It wasn't a conscious decision. I didn't wake up on the first day of November, run my fingers through my shaggy hair and say to my reflection, "You know, I really can't wait until December for my seasonal depression to kick in, so let's start spinning those Christmas tunes now!" Nor was it any one thing that brought this on so early. Maybe it was, instead, a collection of small things.

Maybe it was because I sometimes buy Christmas-related items throughout the course of any given year, whether it's an ornament that catches my eye in July or a special present for a special friend purchased in October. Or maybe because, back in August, I ran into a coworker at Northalsted Market Days who happens to be a member of the Windy City Gay Chorus and who happened to be selling Christmas CDs from the booth he was manning. Or maybe because I saw CDs while shopping at Target and a couple just happened to fly into my basket like ninja throwing stars.

Or maybe I just bloody well felt like it.

Whatever the reason (or accumulation of reasons), empty CD cases now litter my desk while KT Tunstall does the Pretenders' "2,000 Miles" proud--though she blasphemously fumbles a cover of Darlene Love's "Merry Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"--and Clarise, the little doe from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer croons "There's Always Tomorrow," a song that never fails to make me cry, no matter what time of year I hear it.

So what does this mean, listening to the sounds of the holiday season well before the first proper snow has fallen, before the pumpkin lights and faux spider webs have been pulled down, before any of the Salvation Army Santas have taken up their stations on street corners and in front of drug stores? I have no idea. I don't think it means that I'm going to do this every year. I think it's an abberation--some need in me to have the Christmas spirit wafting through the air weeks before it naturally should.

Whatever the case, I'm not going to question it this year. Next year? Maybe. The year after? Definitely.

But right now? Right now, you'll have to excuse me. I have more than a few seasonal decorations and movies to dig out and get ready--but nothing goes up until the day after Thanksgiving. I haven't completely lost my mind.

Not yet, anyway. Give me a few minutes.