I'm writing this from the office this morning, even though today's a day off. Why, you ask? Well, yesterday afternoon I knocked off early; all my tasks were complete. So I went home, had some lunch, caught a brief snooze on the couch. I figured I'd head into town today, anyway, because there's an errand or two I needed to run.
Anyhow, due to some things mentioned at a meeting the other day, I thought it would be a good idea to check my work e-mail from home and see if anything new had been posted. Bad idea. See, we have this snazzy VOIP phone system that not only provides scary-clear phone calls to and from other locations on campus, but it also has a voice-mail system that sends recorded messages to your e-mail account as .wav files. Sure enough, there was a phone message.
Now, you have to understand my long-standing fear and loathing of phone messages. When I have one, I usually assume something bad has happened, or somebody needs something urgent. It's hard to put my finger on just why that is, but I think a lot of it has to do with what happened at my previous job, where I was at constant odds with my management. When I came in the office each morning and checked my voice-mail, I used to announce (loud enough so my co-workers could hear it), "Well, let's see who's demanding my resignation this morning." The funny thing is, at the job I have now I have been very careful, I have great working relationships with just about everyone in the chain of command, and I'm very careful not to get myself into situations that could blow up. So most phone messages I get here are innocuous, and seldom urgent. Still, I have a hangover from the bad experiences almost a decade ago -- and I also have a hefty dose of craftsman's guilt. Did I screw something up? Probably not, but the red light or the voice-mail can tunnel directly into that weak spot in my conscience.
So, this morning, I added "stop by the office" to my list of things to get done. I intentionally didn't check it from home, because if it was something someone needed, I couldn't help them from home; had it been something ultra-urgent, the higher-ups have my home number. But I figured I'd stop in anyway. So this morning I parked the car, muttering under my breath all kinds of grumbled stuff I can't remember (and probably shouldn't repeat anyway, but just think Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story). I come in the office. No red light on the phone. No message? I check the file attachment. The .wav file, in its entirety, is someone hanging up the phone.
I will now pause for five seconds while you laugh yourself silly. Go ahead. I won't look.
:: Jingle Bell...stop! I had planned to save this one for a while, but something happened this week that really made me unable to hold it any longer.
I don't know exactly when it happened that some radio stations decided to go to a 24-hour Christmas music format. I could take it when it began Christmas Eve, or even a couple days before Dec. 25. But, come on...a month and a half before Christmas? And it wouldn't be so bad if it was just one station, either, but we're in an area where we can pick up stations from at least three media markets, and in each one, there's at least one station that won't give it a rest. Making it even worse is that media consolidation has meant any station in a given market that's of a given genre will sound exactly like its counterparts in the other two media markets.
What crimped it was what I discovered a couple days ago. There's always at least one station that offers something different, and a couple years ago I found a station that plays "classic" country music -- stuff I grew up with, like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, John Conlee, stuff like that. When there wasn't something good on the other stations, I could count on this one. Until a few days ago, when it, too, switched to an all-Christmas format. Yes, country Christmas, but still, Christmas. So there's another button on my radio pre-sets I had to change until after the holidays. (That makes three pre-sets I've had to change. Sadly, it now means I have four pre-sets that, on my drive to work, pick up the same mildly amusing redneck yuk-fest morning show.)
I don't want to sound like a grinch. Honest, I'm not. Christmas has always been a special time of year for me, and it brings back memories of the fun I had as a kid. Getting out the Christmas tree and putting out the decorations was always a big deal in our house, and always exciting. I remember how much I loved the "manger scene," as we called it, that depicted the nativity. And the long felt ribbon with 25 pieces of yarn on it, a bell at the bottom, and a typewritten verse at the top. You put it up on Dec. 1, tied pieces of peppermint candy to the strings, and each day you removed a piece of candy.
Christmas always meant the televised staples of the season: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Every year, it was a ritual. So much changed, but those remained constant, and we'd watch those each year. I still remember the first year I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas after I'd moved away from home, and something inside me felt really sad. Something had forever changed. Every year, I still watch it, and every year, I still feel a little sad inside, yearning for what once was.
And Christmas always meant the youth groups at the church putting on a Christmas pageant that we'd help with, the annual parade at the county seat that my father would drive a fire truck in (and my brother and I would ride along), the obligatory family dinners that were usually a lot of fun. And then Christmas morning, which was full of out-and-out avarice and fun in the morning, followed by no end of food coming from the kitchen and a stream of relatives coming by all day.
That's why Christmas has been special to me -- well, along with the obvious reason why Christmas is special. And that's why I'm so sad to see what it's become. Christmas is no longer an event; it's been turned into a mass-media, mass-merchandising monster that force-feeds itself down your throat, earlier and earlier with each passing year. It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving was when it began. But the last few years, it's earlier still. It's almost as if Thanksgiving doesn't exist by itself. I turned to hubby the other day and asked, "Wow, are we still having Thanksgiving any longer?" That's how it feels. And it's sad. It's like the season is now about Obligatory Cheer, as if "you will celebrate the season as we say you will, and you will like it." Ick.
It's made me sad enough as it is, but each year the tyranny of the radio makes it worse and worse. It makes me think that perhaps the best gift I've given myself in a while was the iPod I bought last year, and the car stereo with the auxiliary jack. That way, I'm in control.