I hate to call this a first, but here it is: I dropped by the local Starbucks this morning to replenish the office's coffee supplies. It's been the Christmas season inside Starbucks' doors for the better part of a month, and with the season come the decorations, the special items, the tantalizing prices — and the music. I worked at the same Starbucks for three months of summer in 1999, then Christmas break, then for eight more months after my May 2000 graduation from college. Most of my coworkers made no secret of their contempt for one aspect of the commercial Christmas season: music that would chase them home and loop about in their heads, repetitive and incessant no matter how many compilation albums were alternating in the store's disc-changer. Me, I could care less; granted, I only endured one season from start to finish, but I've never succumbed to the cyncism of fatigue. Too much of anything will leave you numb.
That said, I do grow bored — maybe a little weary — with Christmas' traditional assortment of pop tunes. The most wonderful time of the year is not, for me, in the words of Bart Simpson, about "the birth of Santa Claus." Tunes about everything but the holiday's basis lack substance, and, as I see it, happen to also lack musical profundity and longevity. "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is good for about five plays before I'll seek refuge through the tuning dial or any kind of distance put between offending speakers and myself. If you pitted "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" in an arm-wrestling match against "The Holly and the Ivy" it'd walk away with a sprained elbow. Starbucks' music complement was, for the Christmases of 1999 and 2000, heavily if not exclusively secular.
Today, I was surprised to hear a touching rendition of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" while waiting for my coffee beans to grind. It wasn't cloying, it wasn't obfuscatory: good gracious, there was a man who sounded distinctly like Nat King Cole, singing about "Jesus, our Emmanuel." If I were Christmas shopping it would have felt like shopping for — for Christmas. It was the very song that does not grow tired on the ears. I hope the entire compilation from which the song was playing was sacred music, top to bottom, and that it enjoys heavy rotation.