By Joyner Gross, Staff Writer

It is November 1st, you get into your car and turn it on, flipping through stations on commercial until you hear the familiar ring of “White Christmas.” Are you excited in anticipation of the holidays, or angered by how early it is?

“Christmas songs are all happy and merry and meant to bring joy no matter the time of year,” senior Mackenzie Goodman said. “You should start listening to Christmas music whenever you want, I prefer mid November.”

November is a good time to start so you can get into the holiday spirit and be prepared for all the festivities coming up.

“I think Halloween or Thanksgiving music would be a nice touch, because these holidays seem to be overshadowed by Christmas, and if they got their own music, they might stand out a little more,” junior Joe Baicy said. “But I feel like if they did get their own music, we’d start playing it too early, because that seems to be the ritual for any holiday with its own music genre.”

Baicy has a point that for any kind of holiday music there would be people playing it too much and others complaining. The same thing applies with popular songs on the radio that are constantly overplayed, to the point where people hear the first few chords of the song and immediately change the station.

“People get distracted (from Thanksgiving) in multiple ways. They either get excited for Christmas and forget about Thanksgiving, or they choose to complain about the Christmas music being played too early, which also takes their mind off of Thanksgiving,” Baicy said. “Then again, we have Black Friday the day after, so we have even more people forgetting about Thanksgiving to go camp in front of the mall for a brand new Samsung TV for a discount price.”

Black Friday takes away from the Thanksgiving spirit and for a worse reason than Christmas music. It involves the commercialization of our holidays and how greedy we can be for a good deal. I would prefer to see someone forget about Thanksgiving while listening to songs about snow and sitting by the fire rather than missing their Thanksgiving meal to camp outside of a store.

“I mean there could be music for other holidays but I’m sure it could never compare. It doesn’t take away from Thanksgiving because it only makes people happy and Thanksgiving is a happy time too.”

Goodman prompted a different perspective whereas any other holiday music for either Thanksgiving or Halloween  would not catch on the same way Christmas music has. Christmas songs are one of a kind and could not be replaced, while some holidays like Halloween have attempted to have as well known songs (an example is “The Monster Mash), they have not become a holiday classic. However, there are solutions for anyone who either loves or hates Christmas music.

“Every year, I try to sneak in some heavy metal songs onto the Christmas music playlist being played at home or at holiday parties,” Baicy said.

Photo from The Diamondback.