While everyone complains about the absurdity of rushing the Christmas season forward, I must confess I have been “sneak listening” to Christmas music in my car for weeks.  So sue me.  I love Christmas music.  The day after Halloween there is a local station that begins playing Christmas music 24/7.

How do I “sneak listen”?  I turn off my satellite radio stations.  I can’t seem to find an early holiday station there.  Hey Sirius XM, are you nuts?  Then I reset my dial to my All Holiday music local station.  BUT If anyone else enters my car I switch the channel immediately.  Why?  I don’t want to be the butt of jokes.  I don’t want to hear the lecture about how outrageous it is for the radio to be playing Christmas music so soon.  Not interested.  Can you see me with my fingers in my ears?

Each song I hear takes me back to a former Christmas memory.  It’s a pleasant walk down holiday memory lane.  If I think about it, I believe this disease started early for me.  I remember playing and replaying and replaying a Christmas album when I was a kid.  I wouldn’t stop until I knew every word.  Back then I knew three and four verses of the standard Christmas carols.

But yesterday as I listened, I was thinking about the economics of it.  Isn’t it the writer of a song that gets paid every time a song is played on the radio?  I’m not an expert on this.  But if that is true, wouldn’t writing a holiday tune be the most lucrative thing going?  Year after year that song would be played over and over on the radio.  It wouldn’t fade away like a top forty hit.  Mostly I don’t begrudge that system.  A great song deserves its reward.  But that guy whose grandma got run over by a reindeer and the kid who wanted a hippo for Christmas have to be laughing their guts out at those of us want two months of Christmas music each year.  That makes me feel a little silly.

Yep, I think I’ll keep my early holiday music on the down low.