The turkey time versus jingle jangle dispute
It’s about that time of year when the holidays come knocking at your door. The weather gets a bit chillier, and stores sell decorations for a holiday that seems far away. Now that Halloween has passed, what are holiday enthusiasts supposed to listen to when the catalog of Thanksgiving music is so lacking? There exists a perpetual debate about whether Christmas music is socially acceptable to listen to during the empty period of time that exists between Halloween and Thanksgiving.
“Coming from a household of extremely passionate ‘jingle-bell rockers,’ as we might call them, my family was always super adamant about Christmas and holidays in general,” said Andrew Bass, a second-year design major. “I mean, name one Thanksgiving song. You can’t. If there was a Thanksgiving song, I would sing it, and I would jam to it the whole month until the night of Thanksgiving. But in the sense of spirit, they’re lacking. They need to pick their game up [and] get some tunes out, so we can get into the Thanksgiving vibe.”
Bass is not alone in feeling the shortage of holiday spirit for turkey-themed tunes. Katie Truong, a third-year biological sciences and statistics double major, agrees with Bass’ argument.
“Nov. 1 to Dec. 25 [is okay] because Halloween is over [and] I don’t think there’s Thanksgiving music, so I guess Christmas can kick in then,” Truong said. “I would allow that.”
Second-year communication major Emma Phillips, however, is torn by the decision over whether or not to listen to Christmas music at this time. Instead, she has been “depriving [herself] of holiday music” altogether.
“I feel like that’s very controversial because I want to say no, but when I woke up this morning and wanted to listen to music, I felt like listening to Christmas jazz,” Phillips said. “I decided to listen to my morning playlist instead because I felt like it was too early in the season.”
Phillips is not the only one who wakes up wanting to listen to Christmas music. In fact, Christmas music icon Mariah Carey posted a video on Twitter on Nov. 1 of her going to bed in her Halloween costume and then magically waking up at midnight in her Christmas pajamas and receiving a call from Santa. She answers the call trilling, “It’s time!” while her famous song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” plays in the background.
To all the Mariah Carey enthusiasts out there, including Bass, it is about that time of year to start singing.
“You definitely have to play [Christmas music] in moderation,” Bass said. “The closer you get to Christmas, the more concentrated Christmas music you can play, but now, maybe one song a day, maybe two here and there. Once it hits December, that’s when you start pumping the tunes. Thanksgiving is out of the way, and it’s just the mad-dash to Christmas.”
When asked to choose his favorite Christmas song, Bass laughed and said, “don’t do this to me” — for Bass, picking a favorite Christmas song is “like picking a favorite kid.”
Although Phillips avoids Christmas music altogether until the day after Thanksgiving, Truong plays Christmas music on a regular basis throughout the year. Phillips and Truong represent the two sides of the ceaseless controversy over holiday music etiquette.
“I would say sometimes I listen to Ariana Grande ‘Santa Tell Me,’” Truong said. “It’s on a playlist, always.”
Truong said Thanksgiving decorations can be displayed while listening to Christmas music.
So what’s up with Thanksgiving then? Is it a holiday people simply get through? It seems as though many people enjoy bathing in the Christmas holiday jams before the turkey is even on the table mostly because there is no music to accompany the holiday feast.
“This isn’t necessarily a diss on Thanksgiving, it’s just a wake-up call that the holiday is whack and they lack spirit,” Bass said. “So it forces someone who’s interested in holidays to skip over them because they don’t have what we need or what we deserve, so it makes me go straight to Christmas to get into that excitement.”
There is no right or wrong answer here. Bass, Truong and Phillips embody the spectrum of opinions. There is, however, one consistent deficiency with the Thanksgiving holiday: the lack of music. It is safe to say that the blame of this unresolved debate falls on the lack of tunes for the turkey season.
Written by: Sierra Jimenez — arts@theaggie.org
