Caroling, Caroling

part of the collection

“Holiday” is my favourite music genre, and not just because I know all the words. Ter and I have amassed so many Christmas albums that we used to start playing them on November first. We’d load up the CD player after work, break open the Christmas jigsaw puzzle, and thus would begin our festive celebration.

Every fall, I load up my Starbucks card to ensure I have funds for their annual holiday disc, the entire collection of which I have except the third year edition (the year of “Ru snooze, Ru lose”). One of my favourite gifts ever is the retro-Christmas disc Nicole sent some years back; it’s loaded with cheesy 60s Xmas Muzak and is absolutely wonderfully awful. Ter and I loved it so much that it was copied and mailed with our Christmas cards. And, of course, my online jazz station puts up a holiday channel each November—from the third week in the month until I leave on vacation, I stream it at work.

I confess, I’m a Christmas music ho ho ho.

The acquisition of holiday tuneage has slowed over the years. I still haunt Starbucks until I see their kitschy CD cover and I am still waiting for Def Leppard to record a Christmas album, but now I wait until after November 11 before I start plaguing my world with old chestnuts roasted in new ways. My wee sister alerted me to a potential addiction issue by helping us to move in 2012—she was boxing up my CDs and happened on the array of holiday titles. “How many Christmas discs do you have?” she asked in mild horror.

“I dunno,” I answered, absently. “Seventy-five or something.”

She was hilariously pinched between disgust and dismay. “I have three—and you gave me two of them!”

Hey, I thought, I can quit any time I want.

That was my first hint.