Abba Zabba

I hate Christmas. I just want to get that out of the way early. I hate practically every part of it: the commercialism, the focus on Santa, the idea that everyone in the country wants to hear about Jesus, and the fact that it's completely unavoidable. Which brings me to my point: Christmas music. Some of the traditional songs are decent. Most of the music is horrible, and wouldn't ever get any airplay if it weren't Christmas-specific. But somewhere out there, there must be people who love Christmas music. And for some reason, the whole world caters to them.

It's bad enough that the malls play nothing but Christmas music. If I'm at the mall in December, fighting through the hordes of shoppers who just have to find the perfect pre-packaged gift for everyone they know, I'm in a bad mood. I don't need to hear Mariah Carey crooning a shitty version of a "holiday standard" that a billion other people have covered. It makes me feel sorry for the people who work in the department stores and don't have a choice but to listen to that crap.

But what really gets on my nerves is the radio stations. It used to be that, as it got closer and closer to Christmas, most stations would mix in more Christmas music. That's tolerable. I understand why people want to occasionally listen to that kind of thing, and I could always change the channel. But the new trend is to play nothing but Christmas music. And I'm not talking about during the week before the holiday, or even the whole month of December. A station here in Boston, which I usually listen to, is now playing 24/7 Christmas music, starting more than a week before Thanksgiving! So to satisfy the handful of Christmas fanatics who want to hear the same tired old songs for 6 weeks, they alienate all their listeners who don't want to think about Christmas yet. I hate Christmas.

I'm a liberal, and a Democrat. This means I don't get to feel the thrill of victory very often. So yesterday, I was in a pretty good mood. I decided I'd go to some conservative blogs and see what they had to say about the election. A lot of online conservatives were saying things like "The Democrats will win a few House seats and lose some in the Senate", just being ridiculously optimistic. I wanted to see them eat crow. I thought it would be fun.

And you know what? It wasn't. It was just frightening, in the way that visiting those sites is always frightening to me. People were actually saying things like "The terrorists are rejoicing today as their allies won control of the government", or "I'm glad I don't live in a big city, because we're going to be attacked again." They honestly believe that the Democrats are so evil or so incompetent that they will lead to the destruction of this country.

I didn't know people really thought like that. Yes, I see people joke about how the Democrats are all traitors, and Bush and Cheney certainly talk that way. But I figured it was all just campaign talk, or Ann Coulter craziness, or very mean jokes. Now I find out that these people were really upset and afraid for their lives now that the balance of power in Washington has changed. That's insane, and very upsetting.