Bah! Humbug!

At this time of the year I feel really sorry for the people who work in shopping malls, in the few surviving department stores, and this year for the first time even in the neighbourhood book shop. How can they endure hour after hour of carol music? They deserve extra wages for the hardship. I love many Christmas carols but the versions chosen for endless repetition as background to the shopping spree the vendors hope for, are chintzy schlock. Today I heard far worse. A so-called ballad singer was inflicting on CBC Radio's audience her souped up versions of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Away in a Manger, Come All Ye Faithful, and Stille Nacht (Silent Night) with her horribly out of tune high and low notes and thumper-thumper instrumentation. If she had come within reach I'd have cheerfully garrotted her. Then there are Christmas lights. Sure, they brighten the long nights, but increasing numbers of people leave their twinklies on for months, until daylight saving summer time begins in April if not longer.