Traumatized by Christmas Music

*clears throat*

“IIIII don’t want a lot for Christmas….”

I feel a bit of anxiety around this season. It starts in October when everyone jokes about stores already putting up holiday decoration. I worked in retail for 6 years of my life and every October, every Black Friday, and every weekend in December I was bombarded with needy, messy, and unruly customers. And on top of that, Black Friday was the start of the store’s Christmas playlist. I’ve been out of retail for just as many years and yet I cannot stand to listen to Christmas music earlier than December 21. It makes me cringe with dread.

During, and still many years after my time in retail, I used to just hate the holiday season in general—the consumerism, rude holiday shoppers, blatant disrespect of other religions, but time and online shopping have helped with this tremendously. Yet, it is still the music that most grates my senses. It’s been years, and the fastest way to annoy me is to play any Christmas themed song.

Is there a scenario where I would be happy to play Christmas music in October? Probably not. But I’m also having a hard time coming up with reasons to play Christmas music during December, so maybe I’ll never get over it.

**Just a reminder to be nice to each worker you see while Christmas shopping because there will be 10 that were rude. Niceness matters!**

There are steps that I take each year (after working in retail) that help me feel more festive, namely reading Christmas romances. However, it’s still a slow process in terms of embracing the holiday, and for the record, I have not yet watched any Christmas romance movies on Netflix. And yet, the festiveness still feels forced to me. I’m doing a Christmas-y themed “photo a day” challenge on my Instagram, and it is difficult to consciously choose to post holiday pictures, like it’s just not my personality. (As an aside, this photo a day challenge is fun in other ways because I’m using cool photography apps.) So when music is playing in a store, it’s out of my control and my comfort level.

Surprisingly, the only song that I can listen to with no fear is “All I Want for Christmas is You.” I don’t have any reasoning for this. It’s just what my brain likes, apparently.